Embassador 2

c. 1975
Mixed media: color photocopy, paper, tape, paint, marker
Signed on verso
Paper: 16.25 x 8.25 inches
Frame: 25.5 x 17 3/8 inches
Collection: James Rodewald & Marella Consolini

< Artists + Writers

Doris Cross (1907-1994)

“You’ve been working with the dictionary for some time now. Are you treating it any differently?

I’m coming to see the columns as totems. Can’t they be? Isn’t it a possible interpretation?

Yes, they’re both vertical…. In a sense, you’re carving them, shaping them, somehow investing them with a power or significance…

Yes.

How did you come to base your painting on words in the first place?

It stems from ignorance and curiosity. I’ve always found that I was only run-of-the-mill literate…. I always had to live with someone who could teach me things. You’re fascinated by all this, aren’t you?

Yes, I’m intrigued by creative people, how they work, why. How did you get involved with dictionaries?

I never have thought about the question. One day I discovered that I was collecting dictionaries, so I started opening them up. And the first time I did…. It was one of those miracles, findings, something found seemingly by accident. But I saw it differently, too, as a structure.

How so?

Well, a dictionary column has a head and a body, and sometimes a base. But my first fascination was the headings. They struck me as literature.

I don’t understand. How are the headings of dictionary columns literature?

Like literature, not literature. They stimulated connections I’d never made before. Like… the first one was lacerate and lamb. That’s the way it started. It was right there, saying something. I went crazy on the headings, just the headings, but then I stopped and went more into the body of the columns.

Do you think of yourself as a poet?

No. I’m just dong these things. In this town I’m referred to as the artist who does the dictionary columns. That drives me mad. I’m also referred to as a conceptualist. I guess that means I’m original.

How would you like to be thought of?

As a composite, I guess. My work is not random. It’s more than just words. It’s rhythm, too, and form and texture, and sometimes it’s color. I use it all to make a statement of fact.”

– Doris Cross: The Painted Word, interviewed by Stephen Parks, ARTlines, 1981