Jackie Stluka is putting on an art show in the Tjaden experimental gallery, Tjaden hall, Cornell University. She's a sophomore in college and her art is incredible. I especially love the pieces she's done with her journals. Actually, almost all of her art grows out of what is first put in her journals.

She keeps the most beautiful journals of anyone I've met. I first saw them on a backpacking trip in the Adirondacks this summer. There are words and doodles, pictures, portraits, and collages blended together among the pages. Watercolor, oil, fabric, charcoal, ink: all mediums blending words with artistic representation and abstraction.

She's taken photocopies of pages from her journals, painted over them to edit and embellish, and hung them as a sets next to the displayed journals in their entirety. I'm jealous because I feel like my journals of black and blue ink will never be as beautiful or magnificent, or as significant. (Though my artistic creations: letters, stories, philosphies, and poems, have all, in some way, come from the pages of my journals.)

Jackie is able to extract slivers of her life, put them on a page, and have them come to life, express emotion; and one doesn't even need to read the words on the page. It's interesting that in her editing of the journal pages she's actually covered some of the words, layered them with fabric, tape, and paint. As if to diminish the significance of the words. It sounded like she just artistically didn't like the look of them, but I wan't to talk to her more about that. Was it a way of hiding some of herself?

I think written word is so beautiful and Jackie has very beautiful handwriting on top of that. I would have left the words as they were. (But that harkens back to my trouble with erasing any written phrase, even given the infinite creativity of language. Why does losing just a small phrase sometimes seem like such an irrecoverable loss?)

It seems like her life is better represented (truer, perhaps?) in art rather than in words. She has said that she feels better able to capture her creative impulses in abstract art, rather than in concrete and recognizable images. Is this difference in the creation of art parallel to the difference between poets and fiction writers? Does one rely more heavily on form (poets and abstract artists) where another relies more heavily on conveying experiences through shared and recognizable forms and emotions.

I recently read an article on the role of literature in moral philosphy. It basically said that stories - told orally, read, depicted in film, etc. - teach us about moral philosphy by drawing on our ability to empathize, on our compassionate natures. (And our ability to empathize is so interesting from an evolutionary standpoint, but that's a digression for another day.)

Can art also tell a story? And if yes (it seems yes?) then can art play a role in moral philosophy? It's undeniable that art can evoke emotion, but can you have character development in a static piece? Without character development can any statement be made about morality?

So: Jackie's Art. It'll give you lots to think about and it's up until Saturday afternoon; check it out!