By Sara Stallard

Joseph Grigely exploits his deafness and makes art out of handwritten conversations–scraps of paper used when communicating with hearing people. He turns them into tableaux for display in various installments. Grigely has done shows where gallery visitors get to write out their own notes on a desk. He has been featured in major exhibitions where there are hundreds of notes all over the walls, preserved bits and snatches of babble, be they intelligent or insipid, all up for close scrutiny by those who come and gawk at the marvel of how the typical use of speech has been circumvented. High-quality prints of select conversational notes have been sold in limited editions. His work has been published in art magazines, exhibition catalogs, and in books, and his exhibits have been shown all over the world, in Japan, Ireland, the Czech Republic, France, the United Kingdom, as well as throughout the cosmopolitan cities of America.

One vital aspect of Grigely’s work which astonishes hearing people is witnessing how conversations look, sans sound. On a visual level, Grigely employs a careful yet attractive aesthetic, demonstrating a tendency to arrange his collected notes according to their color. Once, in Prague, he put together a group of notes of which all the colors were variants of blue, while the comments themselves created contrast via the ideas expressed. Indeed, the truly precious qualities of his work are the ideas found in these tableaux, which range from the mundane to the esoteric, from the prim to the bawdy, from the precise to the unintelligible. Some contain drawings, cartoonish or intricately illustrative. Some have arrow connectors, for linking key terms or indicating continuation elsewhere when space runs out (oh yes, we all know how that goes). Most ensue in hilarity or bewilderment, depending on who you are and whatever strokes the quiver of your wit.

Two of my favorite bons mots from one of Grigely’s books, Conversation Pieces (1998), read as follows:

He’s being very rude

about me
I, unfortunately am too
small to fit a wonderbra
He
It’s not something I would
have told you about even
if you could hear—
I would still have written
it don down!

and

This reminded me of one night when I was living in a big warehouse in St. Paul. Some pals & I went into the basement (where bands rented practice rooms) to check out the scene. There were a few people partying & really wasted. A woman showed us how she played “Butt Darts” – by sticking a quarter between her (clothed) butt cheeks & dropping it into a cup. She seemed to think it was the coolest…

Notice how the first example above mentioned the artist’s deafness as a consideration in how the writer chose to communicate. I wonder at the assumption the writer made about herself: would she really have written that down if Grigely was not deaf? Might she not have whispered in his ear, instead? Also, there’s the self-identified cultural stance of being “Deaf,” a position which Grigely largely eschews—I cannot help but wonder about how Grigely perceives such treatment as he received from the writer of that blushing missive, and whether or not participants in last year’s Unity for Gallaudet protests would have reacted differently. With its inclusion in Conversation Pieces, we still cannot tell if Grigely ever views such blasé comments as offensive or if he is simply indifferent to the significance of that ever-so-generic postulation which so many of us hate: “…if you could hear…” Grigely never makes statements judging such perspectives. This is the hallmark of his work: we, the audience (etymological pun intended), decide these things for ourselves.

The second example above is interesting in an altogether different way. Consider how the writer organizes his thoughts using parentheses and quotation marks, despite the slightly imperfect grammar. Even the two uses of parentheses differ from each other; the first use of parentheses is a proper aside, while the second conveys additional emphasis. Also remarkable is how the writer does not utilize common utterances as one might have imagined he would have, if using speech: “…went into the basement, like where bands come and practice, y’know, and so, we checked out the scene, yo, and there were a few people…” The writer of this particular narrative is obviously constrained by the formalism of academic writing. Compare this to the rush of the first writer above as she makes mistakes and crosses them out in her written iteration of the surrounding small talk. Again, Grigely makes no such analysis for anybody’s benefit; these observations are mine, probably because I was an English major in college and I revel in the minutiae of linguistic cadence.

As I write, recite, and dissect at this moment, there is a Grigely show in Baltimore, Maryland, just 35 minutes north of us here in Washington, DC. It runs through August 22nd. So let’s get to that!

Grigely’s exhibition, St. Cecilia, which is housed in five rooms at the Contemporary Museum (see below for address and URL) features a segment entitled “We’re Drunken Bantering About What’s Important In Life,” in which there are two rectangular groups of notes spreading out perpendicularly from the corner along the walls at eye height. On the left-hand side, the notes are all variants of white, while on the right-hand side; the colors resemble those of an irregular kaleidoscope. It’s interesting to look at, from the other side of the room, but the real enjoyment is found in going up close to those two walls and taking the time to read each and every piece tacked up on those walls. Refer to above for reasons why this is fun. Just heed the signs and don’t touch. The oil from our hands is highly corrosive (make note to self: one of the many scary things about our hands—no wonder museum guards always follow me and my friends—they’re suspicious of our flying hands).

The rest of the exhibit is comprised of aural and visual explorations, with the use of speakers and videos. Grigely has lately been developing and presenting unorthodox ways of appreciating how sound and sight all interact. Apparently, hearing people find this very interesting, and indeed, Grigely’s innovative elucidations of how pronunciation can be confusing, along with the implicit dangers of lip reading, are relevant in light of a continuously audist world. But, you, my fellow literati, are likely to be deaf, Deaf, or hard-of-hearing, and irrespective of your preference for either ASL or English, you’ll probably enjoy “We’re Drunken Bantering About What’s Important In Life” the most. It’s sure to stroke that textual beast inside you.

Grigely’s exhibition St. Cecilia is named after the patron saint of music, and while four-fifths of the exhibition appears to be largely for the benefit of hearing people, it is still evident that English and any other written language is subject to the experiential reality of one’s being deaf, as Grigely so plainly demonstrates. I think we’ve all got this in common, whether or not we realize it or care.

——————–
Joseph Grigely
St. Cecilia.
May 6—August 22, 2007
Contemporary Museum.
100 W. Centre Street, Baltimore, MD, 21201
(Admission varies. Donations encouraged.)
http://www.contemporary.org/

You can also run a Google search on Grigely. What a unique last name! Anyway, there’s plenty of information out there. Including how he started his collegiate studies with NTID (takes a bit of digging, that one) and earned a doctorate from Oxford University. Und so weiter.

Sara Stallard loves art, books, cats, and urban landscapes. When she’s not reading, writing or challenging her friends to Scrabble, she can be found prowling around DC’s Eastern Market in search of the perfect cup of coffee. She also enjoys dancing and gardening.