Jo Yarrington

selected images that I thought could act as metaphors, that from a certain perspective could be seen as a discourse on the choices in writing and about that liminality between desire (the wanting to write) and impetus (to actually do it).
There is a passage in Ian McEwan's Atonement that perhaps captures that moment (in speaking of the arm, hand, finger - one's instrument to communicate), as a thing unto itself, bringing into consciousness that which before was not present:
...the mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between moving and nonmoving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge...willing it to move, or being able to move, was not actually the same as moving it. When did it know to move, when did she know to move it? There was no catching herself out. It was either-or. There was no stitching, no seam, and yet she knew that the smooth continuous fabric was the real self - was it her soul? ...[which took the decision to cease pretending, and give the final command].
I was thinking of these images I selected, these objects in nature (intimate, floaty, not quite definable), as possible tools to allow the completion of this movement toward actualized being. What if instead of a pencil or computer, one could reach into that dream void in nature and find a blade of grass or the crest of a leaf that would write what it is or what it could be...a transmitter of one's artistic voice...so much more suited to the breath and breadth of the recording than lead or a keyboard.
Jo Yarrington is a professor of studio art in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT. Her drawings, photographs and installations have been shown in exhibitions at Artist Space, Exit Art, Broadway Windows, St. John the Divine Cathedral, Museum of Catholic Art and Rotunda Gallery, NY; De Cordova Museum and Sculpture Park, MA; Fleisher Art Memorial, PA; I Space, IL; and Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art and William Benton Museum of Art, CT.  International exhibitions have included Galeria Sala Uno, Rome, Italy; Centro de las Artes de Guanajuato, Salamaca, Mexico; Christuskirche, Cologne, Germany, and Glascow Cathedral, Glascow, Scotland.  Recent articles include Glass Magazine and World Sculpture News.  She is a recipient of fellowships from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Brandywine Institute, and the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts.  In 2001, she was one of four artists representing the United States at the Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates.  She lives and works in Norwalk, CT. See more of her work at www.joyarrington.com.