YES, YES, YES, NOW, NOW, NOW
Shawn Bitters at Wonder Fair!

Linguistics lovers, code breakers, and nature nerds, REJOICE! Beginning this Final Friday, Wonder Fair will be home to Shawn Bitters' epic paper sculpture, Yes, Yes, Yes, Now, Now, Now. Tumbling paper rock forms spill in a ten foot flood onto the gallery floor, but there is order to their chaos; each stone is screenprinted with one of 26 faceted patterns corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. Read carefully, (with the aid of Bitters' key,) and there is a message in the mountain…

Bitters' stone sculptures are visually stunning, a harmony of robust color, complex texture, and sensitivity to scale—but a strong conceptual underpinning is perhaps their most compelling draw. Bitters explains his inspiration for the land & language series: “In the short story Signs & Symbols by Vladimir Nabokov, there is a striking example of assigning a language to nature. In this story, a character believes that nature is communicating directly to him through the arrangement of clouds, a network of branches: in everything he sees. Mankind has a long history of reading nature, whether through soothsayers, prophets, or scientists. It is a short step from understanding how a certain environment works to thinking that the environment is communicating with us. By assigning nature a voice and a language, we are lending it human characteristics or, in other words, personifying nature. I am fascinated with the transition between understanding nature and personifying nature. The urge to lend our own thoughts and characteristics to the physical phenomena that shape our environments is irresistible because the result is to render them understandable.”

We hear you Shawn, and we can't wait to see you TONIGHT, at Wonder Fair! In addition to celebrating the opening of “Yes, Yes, Yes…”, this evening Wonder Fair will host a Christening for our new custom-built shop fixtures at 7:00pm. Our new digs were designed and built by KU professor Tom Huang's extremely talented Industrial Design Materials students, and their form was inspired by the organic curves of topographical maps. Join us this Final Friday for a toast to the New Show, New Shop, and a New Year!

Shawn Bitters' Yes, Yes, Yes, Now, Now, Now
Opening Final Friday, January 25, 2013
6-10pm

Event details:

• Ongoing until Sunday, February 17, 2013
• Sundays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
• Wednesdays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
• Thursdays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
• Fridays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
• Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
• Wonder Fair: Art Gallery, Shoppe and Studio, 803 1/2 Massachusetts St., Lawrence
• Cost: Free
• Age limit: All ages