Whenever possible, I like to get back to the basics and return to the foundation of thinking, to the building blocks of referencing and art making. TO THE LETTER is such a project; reducing and distilling the subject to a single and specified component. The naked symbol. The nominal bones. The bride stripped bare. The DNA, if you will, of a language: the cipher. Undressed- down to the “letter,” the “type,” “font,” “mark,” or “code.” Atomized to a unit of expressive measurement... and then incrementally built back up to the simple, self-referring, substantive pearl: the “word,” “sign,” “noun,” or “term.” The string of pearls becomes utterance and sentence. “This sentence is false.” Does a character have a character? How typical is this type? This concerns the image inside the meaning, and the meaning inside that image. Gazing at significance from one more angle, another lens. This project is simply about semiotics, the study and identification of signs and symbols, what they mean, and how they relate to the things or ideas to which they refer