A closeup of one of Todd Camplin’s pieces from his show UnREEDable Words.
It’s hard to believe that lines and shapes could be so interesting. But Texas-based artist Todd Camplin proved that with his art showing of UnREEDable Words. This show took place in the Reed Art Gallery located on the second floor of the Center for Innovative Learning.
Camplin’s work features ink-based drawings on paper. For him, it’s all about creating abstract text and forming it into objects and images. His process involved starting with text and then taking a step back so that he could view it in different forms, such as backwards and dropping prefixes and suffixes with the words to transform them into something entirely new. As he began to mold the text, it would change in meaning for him.
“I really liked it. It’s the detail that caught me,” Riana Teixeira, UMPI student, said. “If you really look into it, it’s just all little circles into the big picture, which I thought was really cool and how he put less circles in some places to make it look faded and a lot in other places to make it look defined.”
From afar, Camplin’s work appears to be abstract images, but upon closer observation, the viewer can see that the images are made of many abstracts shapes and lines. Some include color, while others pertain to plain black ink on paper.
“I thought it was really cool because I guess I was expecting to actually find words in the picture–and some of them did look like letters–but a lot of them were almost like hieroglyphics,” Monica Hewitt, UMPI senior, said. “It looked different from far away than up close and when you got up close you could really see the detail the artist had put into it.”
UnREEDable Words started showing in August and finished at the end of October. The show was open on the First Friday Art Walk on Oct. 6, one of the days of Homecoming: Friends and Family Weekend at UMPI.
The Reed Art Gallery has showings of pieces by local artists all throughout the year. “It gives them a chance to show their work in a small-scale gallery and everybody has to start somewhere,” Hewitt said. “I think it’s really great to give aspiring artist a chance to show their work and have people come in and really enjoy it.”
The Reed Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The gallery is closed on Saturdays, Sundays and on university holidays. For more information about this event or future events, please contact the Reed Art Gallery director, Hyrum Benson, at 207-768-9441 or hyrum.benson@maine.edu. To see more of Camplin’s work, please visit his website www.camplinte.com.
