Sarah Hulsey’s artwork is concerned with the architecture underpinning language, those elegant structures that exist only in the mind. Language is a deeply human trait used in every aspect of our lives, though its workings are largely mysterious to us as speakers. She was first drawn to the analytical components of language through a visual device: hierarchical tree diagrams used to study syntax. The information contained in them resonated as much as the rhythmic, orderly nesting and branching visual groupings. Through artist’s books, drawings, and prints, Hulsey creates visual correlates of linguistic structures, looking for beauty and resonance in the rich patterns that emerge.

In this talk, she will discuss several projects, including Figures of Speech, a piece to be featured in an upcoming exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; her most recent artist’s book edition Allochronologies, which explores alternate notions of time through the lens of the book object; and her current project exploring neolithic counting tokens from Mesopotamia. These small clay objects are thought to be the precursors to cuneiform writing, opening up a fascinating view into the earliest known encoding of information for record keeping.