Three artists were selected as part of a Call for Artists issued in 2020. Selected by members of the Hillyer’s Advisory Committee, these artists and their works encompass a range of themes and artistic approaches to enhance and broaden viewers’ understanding of contemporary art. One artist on view is Kate Fitzpatrick a Mason School of Art Graduate student.
IA&A at Hillyer is a program of International Arts & Artists, (IA&A), a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing cross-cultural understanding and exposure to the arts through exhibitions, programs, and services to artists, arts institutions, and the public.
There Is No Anagram For The Word Anagram
An Anagram is a word formed by rearranging the letters of a different word, using all the letters. Any word that exactly uses those letters in another order is called an anagram. Whether as a literary game, cipher, mysterious verse, or poetry, anagrams provide a channel for making new meaning out of fixed ideas. Anagrams are anchored to their assigned positions and are limited due to their language rules, which are based on a collectively agreed-upon system.
There is no anagram for the word anagram playfully explores the idea of language and meaning by using an imaginary sign system to take the form of text, images, and objects, to break down the construction of our own arbitrary reality. The graphic potential of a sign invites the viewer to consider the possibilities that exist in arrangements that fill in the gap between image and text to explore meaning. In this exhibition, paintings, games, video, and objects offer a dynamic by which to wonder and create personal meaning through indecipherable signs, which become a vessel for schema and a pathway to search and interpret.
About the Artist
Kate Fitzpatrick is an artist and educator based in Alexandria, VA. Fitzpatrick received a BFA in painting from Clarion University of Pennsylvania (1997), an MA in art education from the University of New Mexico, and an MFA in drawing and painting from George Mason University (2020). She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship (2016), through which she spent a semester in India working on an art curriculum with local arts teachers. Fitzpatrick is also an art educator who was honored by the Northern Virginia Magazine as a “Northern Virginian of the Year” (2014) for her creation and implementation of an art and yoga program for youths in the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center. In addition, Fitzpatrick received the Washington Post’s Agnes Meyer Teacher of the Year Award (2013). Fitzpatrick exhibits her work throughout the US and teaches for Arlington Public County Schools.
Artist Statement
Sign systems play a crucial part in the social construction of our reality and we often cannot separate these systems from our own experiences. We take understanding these signs for granted and don’t often think about how we came to recognize these signs or if others see them as we do. However, sign systems can take the form of words, images, sounds, body gestures, and objects. All signs communicate something that we may or may not understand based on our own culture and experiences in the world at large. I explore the gap that exists between image and text. The basis of my work centers around my own sign system to create interpretive spaces filled with unknown letter forms. Repetitive glyphs appear as mantras or broken language, glyphs gather and float away, the thread is stitched or rolled into a ball, and paint is scraped away to reveal new worlds.