Asemic text

I spent a fascinating day in Cricklade near my home at a workshop in the company of Anita Bruce last Thursday. The focus of the day was asemic writing and its use in art work. We spent the day creating text-like forms with pen and ink and simple drawing and painting tools and using various papers (from cartridge to tissue paper). We then made our experiments into a simple hand-bound sketch book.

It was suggested that we might begin by using words from a piece of our own writing or a favourite poem, making writing-like marks in whatever way we chose - writing freely, in a range of sizes, on both sides of the paper, and writing the words backwards and on top of one another. I chose random words from Robert Frost's lovely poem The Sound of Trees which gave words containing a variety of letter shapes - and for me the pleasure I always get from reading the poem.

I began very literally using my natural handwriting and words were quite recognisable but it was interesting how, as the day progressed, I gradually left true meaning behind and concentrated more on the shapes I was producing. Here is a range of the pages I produced ...

Meaning and words still very clear on smaller writing ...

Meaning disappearing on background text ...

Receding meaning - writing randomly on the back of computer paper with a felt tip pen ...

And two on tracing paper over computer paper where the meaning has disappeared ...

Although I had long been aware that many artists use text-like symbols in their work to great effect, the word asemic was new to me when the workshop was first proposed last autumn. I needed to check out its meaning and Wikipedia was the first to offer a definition on Google as follows (I've paraphrased):

... a wordless open semantic form of writing, often calligraphic in form but with no literal verbal sense. A vacuum of meaning is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. S/He has to decide whether to read or to look. 

In another source, Sheila Ceccarelli on accessart.org explains that it can be considered as the text that infants write before they can form letters. Having recently watched two of my young grandchildren 'doing writing', one with more recognisable success than the other, I could well see what she meant.

She provides two examples by teenagers in her drawing class which I found very useful, especially as the work done by our group was all executed in black and white.

I think that this has real interest for me and I'm sure I will use the asemic writing again, given time to absorb the ideas and find suitable ways to make use of the techniques.