John Jacobsmeyer
May 19 - June 5, 2008
Brooklyn based artist, John Jacobsmeyer worked on the final stages of a 5 year project to create a series of 80 wood engravings that form a kind of novel based on James Dickey’s poem “Sheep Child.” Dickey’s poem is the story of a creature, half human and half sheep, that has been preserved in an Atlanta museum. Such creatures have capture the imagination from the ancient mythology of the Greeks to the modern mythology of the X-men, and as scientists appear to be on the threshold of making these hybrids a reality they haven’t lost any of their potency as metaphor. Jacobsmeyer’s blocks, all cross sections from the trunk of a single maple tree cut from a new Hampshire grove, depict characters from a wide range of pop cultural sources comunitcating sections of the poem through sign language.
Brooklyn based artist, John Jacobsmeyer worked on the final stages of a 5 year project to create a series of 80 wood engravings that form a kind of novel based on James Dickey’s poem “Sheep Child.” Dickey’s poem is the story of a creature, half human and half sheep, that has been preserved in an Atlanta museum. Such creatures have capture the imagination from the ancient mythology of the Greeks to the modern mythology of the X-men, and as scientists appear to be on the threshold of making these hybrids a reality they haven’t lost any of their potency as metaphor. Jacobsmeyer’s blocks, all cross sections from the trunk of a single maple tree cut from a new Hampshire grove, depict characters from a wide range of pop cultural sources comunitcating sections of the poem through sign language.
