A new art exhibit in Rapid City explores the saying an image is worth a thousand words. The series features 100 collages and images created by a Los Angeles based artist.
One hundred portraits etched in pencil lined the walls of the Apex Gallery at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Len Davis’s collection, A Thousand Words, features sketches of faces over text.
“I was bike riding one day and I found pieces of paper from a love novel. You know news print with a lot of text on it. I found it on the street as I was bike riding and I was thinking, you know what-and this was in 2008- I said, you know I’m going to use this for something. But I’m going to hold onto this book.”
The pages became the background for every image in Davis‘s exhibition. Layers of magazine cut outs, discontinued stamps and even candy wrappers with text logos surround the sketches. Davis says the words and images work together to give the show its title.
“It explores the literal and figurative sense of the term in and of itself-a thousand words. And when you see a person’s face you can pretty much tell what the expression is or if they’re having a bad day or if they’re having a good day just by their expression. That’s the figurative sense. The literal sense is I drew the face over a series of words. But the Drawing of the face-A picture’s worth a thousand words”
Davis says expressions can show what words explicitly explain.
He created the collages over several years.
“I did maybe like the first 30 or 40 in 2010 and then finished up the remaining 60 of them in 2013.”
The series has been displayed on campuses across country and is scheduled to continue touring throughout the year. It is on display at School of Mines through February 20th.