Isle of Rowlyria, Second Life — August 2026
When I was asked to do a show in Second Life, I decided to go back to an older body of work. I didn’t want to make a new show just for the sake of making something new. I wanted to look again at work that still had something to say to me.
Words I Cannot Spell started several years ago at Hunt & Gather, a wonderful old junk shop in Minneapolis. I saw a pile of letters stacked on top of one another. I stopped and looked at them.
I thought, that’s how I see words.
I started taking photographs.
But the photographs were too perfect. The camera knew exactly where every letter was supposed to be. I don’t always see them that way.
I began to have fun. I jumbled things up to more or less replicate what a page sometimes looks like to me—with a dash of anxiety and confusion thrown in.
That is what interested me about bringing these pieces back for the Second Life exhibition.
I was very appreciative of the opportunity to show this body of work again. The work is older, but the experience behind it is still very much a part of how I see.
Lately I have been doing a lot more writing—articles, agendas, reflections, and writing about my artwork. Maybe that’s why I found myself thinking about those letters again and about how I see words.
Showing this work again gave me another opportunity to give the viewer a little insight into how I experience the world through dyslexia.
Sometimes older artwork just needs another place and another time to speak.
