Icon be Simple


I'm working on a YA book entitled "The Unibrow Underground." Throughout the book, the main character sees these cryptic signs of a solid line over the word 'eye'. These turn out to be signs from 'the Unibrow Underground." I've been playing around with the image, keeping in mind Saroyan's famous 'eyeye'. Also, Jenny Sampirisi's great Other Cl/utter site has some new work by Meredith Quartermain playing with reversed e's which got me to thinking.







I don't know if the urge toward minimalism or toward elaboration has a positive correlation with the Apollonian/Dionysian duality. Lately, I've been aspiring to create very simple iconic visual poems. Perhaps they have a relation to Asian calligraphy -- one single mark created with a single impulse, though in reality, my pieces are often not so 'of the moment', but are the result of tinkering. Not that there's anything wrong with tinkering. What is democracy but tinkering...









Comments

Chris said…
URGENT AND KEY: The Spanish for "eye" is:

ojo

Which always carries the sort of pun your first "eye" there goes for, the two eyes and nose.
gary barwin said…
ojo: like two eyes, a nose, and a bindi.

and in Polish it's oko, two eyes, and a nose with some nostril issues.
Chris said…
Ah! In Esperanto, it's okulo, which is... doable, but trickier.