First Friday with Kirkworks Art: Figures of Speech

Join us every First Friday for a night of local art!

Our next artist in the Ironton Gallery is local Denver artist Taylor Kirkpatrick of Kirkworks Art. 

Celebrate First Friday with a specialty cocktail served in a limited edition artist-designed glass that's yours to keep. Verse, Line & Sinker features Lemongrass Shochu, Pear Puree, Ironton Amaretto Liqueur, Cherry Juice and a Lemon Wedge.

The collection can be seen in our free gallery for the month of June during our normal operating hours. Be sure to check out all the great art happenings throughout the RiNo, River North Art District on First Friday's.

Artist Statement: I am fascinated that the basis of all communication – How we express our dreams and desires, communicate our love and our loathing, engage in social discourse – comes down to rearranging the letters of the alphabet. As a logophile, interest and facility came with a desire to demonstrate mastery.  In that way, I feel comfortable characterizing myself as a SNOOT as defined in David Foster Wallace’s article, “Authority and American Usage” (2005):

There are lots of epithets for people like this--Grammar Nazis, Usage Nerds, Syntax Snobs, the Grammar Battalion, the Language Police. The term I was raised with is SNOOT. The word might be slightly self-mocking, but those other terms are outright dysphemisms. A SNOOT can be defined as somebody who knows what dysphemism means and doesn’t mind letting you know it.

To me, one of the highest and most nuanced forms of communication is humor. It breaks down barriers, disguises the truth and new ideas as fun, and is a universal language that helps people come together. A humorist, in the construction of witticisms, demonstrates the ability to navigate between perspectives, gather attentions and carry the listener through conceptual associations, and identify hypocrisy with the nuance of language (and timing). Wordplay - jeux de mots, puns, double entendres, and their ilk - are about transformation and delivering joyous delight – and philosophically, delivering joyous delight is what I would like to do until I die.

I celebrate wordplay in my art, and the transformation in meaning that emerges when letters are jumbled, dropped, or otherwise manipulated, is where you, the viewer, must participate. Mellifluousity and playfulness are the drivers - and the product - of this art show. The concepts contained in Figures of Speech are a lot of things, but my reasons for creating them are detached from your reaction and experience; I hope that the art communicates with you - that it elicits reflection, an open mind, and in several cases, joyous delight – but unless you complete it, it is unfinished.