Oh Matchless Earth
by Danny Floyd
December 2021
Artist Statement
“The Pandemic found me quarantined and seeking solace in the forest of west Georgia in an attempt to escape the terror of proximity in urban life. I thought often of Emily Dickinson’s words, particularly her preoccupation with nature, contradicting the historical mythology that she never left the house. Despite common, ableist assumptions concerning her deviations from normative life, she seems to me to represent different but simultaneous paradigms of isolation relevant to shelter-in-place. The mysteriousness of her coded word choices gives a feeling that the writing surrounds me like an atmosphere or wilderness. As all communication felt long range, I turned to her 36-year correspondence with Susan Gilbert Dickinson, her sister-in-law. I wanted to feature these letters in a nonlinear way that emphasized the queerness of their nontraditional relationship. Her language is always divergent, often featuring witty marginalia, so I include in the exhibition the marginalia of my thinking, free-association of textual meaning and nonsense. The interior of a home feels like the right place to impart these contradictions of domesticity and wildness.”
– Danny Floyd
Artist Bio
Danny Floyd is an artist, researcher, curator, and educator based out of Chicago. He holds a BFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), an MA in Visual and Critical Studies, and an MFA in Sculpture both from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). At the risk of confusion, his work seeks the narrow threshold between meaning and nonsense in text and images. Often at odds with neuro-normative conventions, he embraces divergent thinking through improvisation and the delightfully weird. He is motivated by the spatial quality of language and the page. Danny is the Exhibitions Director for ACRE and a Lecturer of Visual & Critical Studies and Sculpture at SAIC. Since 2013, he has been an active part of Chicago's artist-run space community through two programs, Ballroom Projects and Adler & Floyd. He has held curatorial residencies with ACRE and Chicago Artists Coalition. He was also awarded the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation Curatorial Fellowship in 2017.