Karen Schiff on Stefana McClure

Whispers of language
We can never fully hear
What words try to say


When I think about the “words” Stefana McClure is tracing in this piece – pictograms, ideograms, glyphs – I become aware of all that I’ll never understand. This isn’t just because I don’t know Japanese, or because I’m trained in letter-based languages instead. It’s also because there are some words that are almost too faint to see: what might not be visible in this picture of this picture is a column of marks on the far right. This column centers the image in its vermilion field, and it poignantly suggests that all our expressions are haunted by meanings that lie beyond language, and beyond us.