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Asemic Writing:
Asemic writing is a developing art movement that depicts writing-like markings on paper or canvas. It embraces the mystery between silence, what is yet to be spoken, and meaning, the semantics of known language. And inhabits an essential space of expression, the need to depict what is yet fully denotational. What is represented are the feelings or ideas that the word, or markings, suggests, to the artist, and to the viewer.
These works engage the viewer in a unique way, beyond more traditional abstract work, because the marks seem like one should be able to read them and that the marks are meant to be read. This awakens the part of the mind that engages with language and in lieu of being given words with known meaning the viewer creates their own translation or meaning of what is written, entering, in a sense, a conversation with the piece.
In 2021 two collections of writing and asemic writings were published. Fluency: a collection of asemic writing (Shanti Arts) is an essay on asemics and my own artistic process, and She Speaks Tongues (Anhinga Press) a collection of asemic writings and poems based on the voices of five woman.
Asemic writing is a developing art movement that depicts writing-like markings on paper or canvas. It embraces the mystery between silence, what is yet to be spoken, and meaning, the semantics of known language. And inhabits an essential space of expression, the need to depict what is yet fully denotational. What is represented are the feelings or ideas that the word, or markings, suggests, to the artist, and to the viewer.
These works engage the viewer in a unique way, beyond more traditional abstract work, because the marks seem like one should be able to read them and that the marks are meant to be read. This awakens the part of the mind that engages with language and in lieu of being given words with known meaning the viewer creates their own translation or meaning of what is written, entering, in a sense, a conversation with the piece.
In 2021 two collections of writing and asemic writings were published. Fluency: a collection of asemic writing (Shanti Arts) is an essay on asemics and my own artistic process, and She Speaks Tongues (Anhinga Press) a collection of asemic writings and poems based on the voices of five woman.
some new work from my series:
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In Fluency, we see a union of Karla Van Vliet’s lifelong practices of art and poetry, each dissolving into the other and resurfacing as asemic writing in full flower. Here are thirty-seven images, thirty-seven pieces of literary expression that extend far beyond literary convention, accompanied by Van Vliet’s personal insights and remarks.
“I listen into this empty and full space and then I place my pen or brush to the page and let my hand move. This is the practice of communication with what is within me. With asemic writing I do not need to know anything more than this. No word required. No sense of meaning required. Just the willingness and desire to be in the process of making marks.” - Karla Van Vliet, Fluency “Subtly tinted and textured, Van Vliet’s markings seem much older than they are--fragments from a lost civilization, wiser than ours. Each page is worth a prolonged contemplation.” — Peter Schwenger, author of Asemic: The Art of Writing. To order! From Shanti Arts
BACK COVER COMMENTS
Poet and visual artist Karla van Vliet’s bold, inspiring, and mediative new book, She Speaks Tongues, is in the great traditions of asemic writing, abstract and surrealist art, calligraphy and graffiti, Zen and American pastoral poetry. In this collection Van Vliet enacts how the art of the line (visual and poetic), like Mirtha Dermisache’s “Libro No 1,” is part of our aesthetic intuition, where we create meaning from the known and unknown spaces of our “blessings and despair.” These pages, illuminated by the power of the great spirit, are where “the wind sings into every torn and ragged place in my body.” Hers is a tender poetry that takes the landscape into the great thunder of meaning where “plums like words” suffice in a world here “your absence was an orchard.” She Speaks Tongues is a kind of creation myth for our time. In this book I find solace and grace and a great generous spirit. — Elizabeth A.I. Powell, author of Atomizer and Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter Anhinga Press, 2021 To order 
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