In her recent sculptural wall pieces artist Jane Birdsall-Lander reconfigures found objects and then binds them together with pigment stained waxed linen thread to build a group of primal alphabet forms. Made from cast offs such as salvaged wooden canes and scythe handles these pieces have the prehensile tension of primitive objects while at the same time they are elegant and seamlessly crafted. Conceptually the sculptures are inspired by the artist’s interest in the evolution of pictographs and ideographs into the modern alphabet as well as her desire to incorporate recycled artifacts into the sculptures. Her object/signs project a hands width from the wall cast shadows on the wall above and below. In this work Birdsall-Lander draws upon the alphabet as a source evoking a primitive communicative sense somewhere between music and poetry. These forms which are at the same time ideas and primordial shapes, sometimes assume a symbolic stance referring to the instinctive positions the animal and human body can assume at moments of deep emotion. Victor Hugo writes that “human society, the world the whole of mankind is in the alphabet” and so it is with Birdsall-Lander’s “Bound Alphabet.”

Education

1982 Graduate Writing Program, Washington University, St. Louis, MO
1997 MAT, Webster University, St. Louis, MO
1974 MA, Washington University, St. Louis, MO
1969 BA, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Selected Exhibitions

  2009	The Language of Objects, The Sheldon Art Galleries, St. Louis, MO                    
  2007	Mystery Contained, Sculptural Basketry, Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO                    
  2005	Black and White, Shaw Cramer Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, MA                   
  2004	Women Only, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis MO                   
                Letterforms, Meramec Gallery, St. Louis, MO                   
 2003	Common Ground Uncommon Experiences, Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis                   
 2001	Vestiges, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO (solo exhibit)
                Ritual, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO (site installation/solo)	                   
 2000	Of World and Self, Innsbrook Conference Center, Innsbrook, MO                   
 1997	Masked Encounters, Saint Louis Design Center, St. Louis, MO                   
                University of Missouri St. Louis, National Women’s Studies Association (solo)                   
 1996	Girlslife: Artifacts and Testimony, Forum for Contemporary Art (CAMSTL), St. Louis (solo exhibit)                   
 1993	Ghosts From the Center of the Earth, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO (solo)                   
                Is Poetry a Visual Art?, Truman Art Center, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN                        
                Between Object and Word, Midwest Center for the Literary Arts, Kansas City, MO                       
 1992	In This County, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO (solo exhibit)                   
                Creating Ourselves, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM                   
 1991	Sculpture and Poetry, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis MO (solo exhibit)