An Infinite Variety of Similar Things
by JS van Buskirk & Julie Püttgen
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About the Book
At around the same time JS began work on the IVOST poems, Julie Püttgen was developing the Internet Mandala process as part of her MFA work at Georgia State University. This system of text-to-image translation functions by layering images found through search engine results for selected texts or key words, and assumes the following: that there is an underlying visual order within the internet; that trolling for images using words as bait yields important insight into this order; and that participation in a series of chance operations within this order can produce a culturally significant mirror for personal meaning.
JS and Julie – lifelong friends – soon realized that the IVOST poems and the Internet Mandala process would each greatly benefit the other in a collaborative project. Julie created mandalas for JS' key lines in each of the IVOST poems. The image associated with each poem is thus essentially a translation of the poem’s key line into a sort of visual language of the internet. Some of the IVOST mandalas clearly reveal their connection to the text, while others stand in peculiar and even startling contrast to their textual sources.
About the Creator
Julie Püttgen was born in 1972 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and grew up in Fresno and Atlanta. She attended Yale University (BA in Studio Art), Georgia State University (MFA in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking), and Goddard College (MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling / Expressive Arts Therapy). In the 1990's, she taught in Hong Kong, traveled around Asia, and lived as a nun in Buddhist monasteries for three years. As an artist, Ms. Püttgen works across media (painting, photography, digital animation, artist's books, installation), and also curates exhibitions. She has exhibited widely in museums and galleries across the US & internationally, as well as in more informal community spaces. Her teaching and therapy practices extend from kids to college students to adults to elders, in spaces including psychotherapy practice, Buddhist retreat, school artist-in-residence programs, and retirement communities. Embodied creativity and healing are the central passions of her life.