The Old Jail Art Center | Terri Thornton

Terri Thornton - Binary System

September 25th – January 23rd 2011

Terri Thornton - Binary System, from the Cell Series of Exhibitions

Terri Thornton in her studio

Binary System: Terri Thornton of Fort Worth, Texas, is the seventh in a series of exhibitions featuring contemporary Texas artists. Individual artists are invited to create an exhibition of their work within the upper galleries of the museum's historic 1877 old jail building.

Thornton describes her art as primarily drawing, but she uses the traditional media beyond its conventional definitions. In recent installations of her work, she has utilized the surfaces of an interior room for her various "drawing" methods. These methods may be pinpricks on surfaces, subtle graphite and pen marks, erased print text, and constructed lines and shapes using masking tape. Normally conceptually based, the subject matters in her drawings and installations range from rendered objects, carefully selected and placed text, to abstract visceral images.

For Binary System, Thornton uses her versed and signature techniques in the context of the museum's 1877 old jail building; a structure utilized to incarcerate inmates from the "wild west." With formal and conceptual approaches, Thornton explores isolated captivity, authority, elusive meanings of words, the invocation of history, and how the human mind assimilates meaning or significance from such disparate code.

Learn more about Terri Thornton and Binary System in this interview with OJAC Preparator, Patrick Kelly:

PK Let's start with the title of your installation Binary System. Explain how the title relates to the work and/or the 1877 old jail building.

TT Binary System might be a problematic title since the term is now most readily related to technology and computer coding. While there may very well be correlations found with this definition and the exhibition, the numerical binary system, in opposition to the decimal system, is not what I had in mind. There is also the binary star, which I do in fact reference in the installation of one of the cells. Nevertheless, my use of the term here is philosophical.

The title first suggested itself when listening to Muriel Rukeyser read her 1973 poem Ballad of Orange and Grape in which she generally addresses the complexity of meaning in the oppositional terms of "any binary system." It made me think of the two cells at the Old Jail that are similar but differ in size, details and their specific uses as jail cells. It also occurred to me that the space once used to hold suspected criminals is now used to show art. One use speaks to confinement and the other to freedom, freedom of thought anyway. But in fact a jail cell and a museum are each a place of contemplation. My original intent, one that I have loosely followed, was to speak to the concepts of presence and absence/empty and full with individual works and the installation of each cell. These concepts being opposing binary systems that through a postmodern reading are far too complex to simply define as opposites, I wanted their various presentations to throw everything into question, hopefully encouraging the contemplation that the space calls for - as a jail or museum.

PK Your response to the first question lends itself to discussing many concepts. I would suspect that is what you want your installation to provoke. Your notion of "contemplation" is interesting. Have you thought about the point where contemplation (normally a pleasant and voluntary activity) becomes a torment to an inmate or a dreaded activity for an art viewer? I ask you about the art viewer specifically since you confront this as an artist.

TT I do hope that the installation offers a varied experience for everyone who sees it. My ideas for this installation are somewhat tight but every original thought seems to break out in a number of directions. This is what has always maintained my interest in making art. However, there's a bit of a tug-a-war between desire and demand as an artist in that following those leads also threatens my time-line. Contemplation is key for me in both making and viewing art. I might be so bold as to propose that it is the reason for art. And art, like life, is as often dark as it is uplifting (as well as all things in-between). That's how art speaks to and equips us for life. So yes, I have thought about contemplation as a dreaded activity. It can be a tie to sanity and preservation or it can be a source of madness that destroys its host. I hope that as art, Binary System offers a safe distance to engage and contemplate a full range of thoughts and ideas as they pertain to the images, objects and spaces of the exhibition. Honestly, that's the only reason to bother seeing it.

PK Of these images and objects within the space, you use text in a limited and thoughtful manner...as an equal partner in the hierarchy of elements. In the wrong hands, text in art can be heavy-handed, trite, clumsy, awkward or any number of other adjectives. Can you explain how you use text in your work and within Binary System?

TT I'm glad you see my use of text for Binary System as "thoughtful" and "in the right hands." However, it is with a little trepidation that I continue given all the possible pitfalls you've laid out. Not that trepidation isn't part of the game anyway - every move by an artist, since we became aware that we are making art, is carefully considered with a long history of what came before and what there is to offer to that which follows in mind. But you know this as an artist yourself.

It is my feeling that words conjure images and images conjure words. How they are each used determines their power and potential. As mentioned, my work strives for contemplation in the making and the viewing so, both image and text are vehicles for that objective. Binary System might tell a story or it might be a collection of disparate parts that speak individually. That is up to the viewer. Nevertheless, I suspect that it is hard to experience any one element (image, object, text, sound, color, etc.) without linking it to the loaded space of the jail cells and ultimately creating links between the works. It is also likely that John Hayden scratched in the wall in the corner of the south cell and all the stories that that mark suggests, is more than most visitors can dismiss. Text, like image, and maybe even as image in this case, hits at something deep and unavoidable in most of us.

Specifically, I see empty, full, empty, fill, empty becoming a mantra of sorts that moves from statement to instruction or perhaps observation to a call for action. It is first seen, then read, and then hopefully considered. That is an example of what I am after with the use of text.

PK Willingly or not, John Hayden and the viewers have become active participants in your installation. Some viewers may realize the shift from being an observer to a participator. Do you feel this can be intimidating to a viewer, when many are accustomed the traditional "window onto the world" experience in viewing art?

TT I hope it isn't intimidating but I suppose it could be. Ideally the shift is a welcome opportunity to be included, to have a voice, to be a part of a conversation and leave having had a genuine experience that changes things for the viewer. I'm not sure any good art is less than that. Even a "window on the world" should go beyond seeing. In addressing the premise of the 53^rd Venice Biennale, Making Worlds, curator Daniel Birnbaum explained, "A work of art is more than an object, more than a commodity. It embodies a vision of the world, and if taken seriously must be seen as a way of making worlds." He also speaks of "artistic translation" and "productive misreadings" as he suggests that the act of translation makes our world richer. This is how I see the interaction of artist, art and viewer. At its best, I think art is a Linqua Franca, a language used to communicate between groups who don't share a mother tongue. It is in this shared, imperfect and challenging exchange that meaning is made. The artist begins the conversation but it requires the thoughts and efforts of the viewer to be meaningful, useful even.

As for John Hayden he was a willing participant when he made his enduring mark and is as much a part of whatever happens in those spaces, as are the walls and materials that make them.

PK In conclusion, I'll ask a standard question that has been asked of artists, and by artists, for ages. Would you continue to make art if you, as the artist, were the sole participant?

TT My work is dependent on a receiver. I don't make to satisfy a need to make. I make to put something into the world, to encourage thought and initiate experience.