Pattern Book

Russell weaves his writing into pictures... He chops his text into geometric shapes, casts it in rainbow colors and visually assaultive fonts, and scratches it onto photographs. In the work contained here, in Pattern Book, he laces text into art nouveau wallpaper, dissolving his stories into a swooning screen of domestic pattern. At every turn, it seems, Russell throws some wrench into the cogs of literary consumption, slowing the reader down, jostling expectations, demanding attention-challenging the reader, in other words, to really want to be reading.-Holly Myers Pattern Book by Christopher Russell collects a number of images and texts, images woven through texts, and texts woven together through images. Kevin Killian, author of Impossible Princess (City Lights 2009), says, I was born wanting a Christopher Russell to join me in this confusing world.... I wanted a boy with confused gaze, mortified as I am by the harsh and ugly crumples of life, but one who, with bold decisive strokes, could hack a pathway out if it. ... Russell's method, in which he dethrones language's hegemony over rival visual formations by distorting and exaggerating its recognizable, even homey, patterns borrows roots from many traditions. Medieval monks are said to have curried favor with abbots by carving Bible verses into the head of a pin. ... When language, or the image, is enervated, the work of art has room for other connotations to manifest. ... And in these beautiful pages we will see, and we will not see, things it will take us a hundred years to understand.