Language is a muddy landscape. To summit, you must slog through the sludge—only to find there is no peak.
My recent piece, And & Ampersand, underwent countless iterations over several years. I sketched, collaged, and reworked the concept repeatedly before arriving at the final design. The process was prolonged by a self-imposed standard of getting it right—so much so that I nearly abandoned the idea, unable to settle on a final form.
Many of my text-based works center on single words or utterances, and my process has evolved to yield a high success rate in my initial drafts. But phrases pose a greater challenge—fragmenting, rearranging, and visualizing their interactions is inherently more complex. Yet, despite the struggle, I kept returning to And & Ampersand.
The piece is a critical exploration within my Shape of Language series, which examines language as an abstract entity by cutting up and redrawing its physical manifestation—text. And & Ampersand specifically interrogates the interplay between written and spoken forms.
The phrase disrupts the signifier/signified relationship. “Ampersand” refers to “&,” but “&” can replace “and.” If “and” and “&” are interchangeable, does “ampersand” also function as a conjunction? No—its meaning collapses. While I can write “pencil and paper” or “pencil & paper,” “pencil ampersand paper” makes no sense.
This highlights the relationship between written and spoken language. The ampersand is a typographic sign—it exists visually in writing but must be verbalized in speech (“and” or “ampersand”). The phrase calls attention to how language is mediated through sounds and symbols.
At its core, language manifests in multiple forms: writing and speech. Writing is made up of lines and shapes that form letters, words, and sentences, communicating thought. Speech is made up of sounds, rather than lines and shapes, that amount to the same. Their fundamental building blocks differ, yet their purpose is shared—to communicate. While the full shape of language cannot be illustrated due to these disjunct foundations, And & Ampersand reveals one small wrinkle.