Endangered Alphabets Exhibition and Public Lecture
ENDANGERED ALPHABETS
works by Tim Brookes
MONTPELIER, VT: From January 3 – February 1, 2019 visitors to the Vermont State House will see an exhibition that combines something familiar—pieces of Vermont curly maple—with something utterly unfamiliar: hand-carved texts in writing whose very letters face extinction. The crafted carvings, of Vermont writer/artist Tim Brookes, bring together elements of calligraphy, woodwork, linguistics, anthropology and human rights to address a question that is rarely asked, but directly affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide: what happens when a culture loses its alphabet?
This unique and insightful exhibit will be celebrated with an Opening Reception and Artist Talk on January 17 from 4:00-6:00pm with Tim Brookes and Lt. Governor David Zuckerman.
Brookes will speak on art, woodwork, and collaborating with endangered cultures WHERE? WHEN? Admission is free and open to the public.
“If something is important, we write it down,” explained Brookes, founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project. “When a culture, usually a minority or indigenous culture, is forced to adopt another writing system, then within two generations everything they’ve written for hundreds, even thousands of years—sacred texts, poems, personal correspondence, legal documents, the collective experience, wisdom and identity of a people–is lost.” Most of the carvings on display in the State House show translations of Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
“The sad irony,” Brookes said, “is that these extraordinary writing systems, and the cultures that developed them, are endangered precisely because people have not acted toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Languages represented include Cherokee, Chu-Nom (Vietnam), Inuktitut (Canada), Balinese (Indonesia), Yi (China), Bassa Vah (Liberia) and half-a-dozen others. In addition, the exhibition includes a carving of an endangered language indigenous to Vermont: Abenaki. It reads, “People of the Dawn Lands.”
“My designer, Alec Julien and I, were honored to work with the tribal council to create a custom Abenaki font,” Brookes explained. “Abenaki is an oral culture, but Alec incorporated motifs from their traditional artwork and beading into a digital type design.” The wood used for the carving, donated by Vermonter David Yandell, is from blown-down cherry trees from his property in Williston.
Endangered Alphabets carvings have been displayed all over the world at galleries, museums, libraries, colleges, and universities including Cambridge, Yale, First Nations University, Harvard, and the Smithsonian Institution, and have been profiled in the Atlantic and National Geographic .
The Endangered Alphabets Project is a Vermont-based federal non-profit whose mission is to play an active role in preserving endangered cultures by using their writing systems to create unique artwork and educational materials.
For more information or to set-up an interview please contact Tim Brookes directly at: Email: tim@endangeredalphabets.com . Phone: (802) 310-5429. Website: www.endangeredalphabets.com
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