Terri Whetstone is a Canada-based multidisciplinary artist working with large-scale painting, text, contemporary textiles, collage, and photocollage. She is an established visual artist with an active studio and exhibition career. Her artwork is preoccupied with (and generally falls into) one of four themes: Identity, Text-based, Formalism, and Nature/Science.

Sparkling Tongue Press was delighted to see Terri submit some of her recent asemic work for consideration for our MISTRANSLATIONS issue. We were more than happy to feature it and we chose one piece, based on our logo, for our cover art! We wanted to get to know Terri’s practice a little more…

As an artist, how do you position your relationship towards asemic writing?

Asemic writing is alchemy. It is this tool of transmutation that opens me up to expressing everything I’ve ever wanted to write but don’t wish to have read. It lets me be both writer and visual artist creating phenomenological spaces and perceptual constructs where “meaning” is achieved only through the recursive experience of viewing the artworks. Asemic writing creates a liminal space where one is no longer stating opinions or platitudes. It is entirely non-self-referential, and that is brilliant and needed in a global culture where people say too much too much of the time. Or maybe it is so self-referential that no one cares! Who knows!

How important are colour choices when working on a piece of art?

Colour is everything!
But colour is loaded with cultural assumptions – so that’s a problem. But never mind. Just paint everything Red.

Do you consider yourself to be a reader, viewer (or both) of asemic art?

Trick question! Can we separate out the spontaneous effort to read from looking when it comes to asemic art? I don’t think so. But that said, I’m a visual artist, so I think I first respond to asemic art in a kind of gestalt way – taking the whole in. Then I may find myself trying to decode it. Or I may notice I’m projecting literal “meaning” onto the work. But I think the tremendous thing about asemic art is this tightrope it walks that demands the viewer either walk along or, if not, at least hold one’s breath while we (the creators) transverse that line suspended in space.

Mirrors and Filters

Make sure to check out Terri’s website and her instagram profile for more great work!