A New Self Portrait:
This is my face. I know what I look like but proving it is a challenge. The canvas is cropped to the sides of the face with no free space before the edges. The painting consists of white and red. Skin is white, the features are red. My forehead takes up the top half of the canvas. There are a few fine-lined horizontal 3’s creasing my skin. My brows are bushy like a wizard’s, also resembling caterpillars. They angle like inverted check marks. My eyes are closed and show no lashes. There is a tiny dot on each temple. They are symmetrical moles. As my Nana said, I have a “perfect Roman nose.” From the little tuft of unibrow to the edge of the nostrils is about two inches. The tip of my nose ends pointing straight ahead, even though the bridge has a bump or break which sets it slightly off course. The outer corners of my eyes are also two inches away from the razorline of my mustache. Thick salt-and-cayenne-pepper hairs shaped away from the nostrils above my mouth while the rest of my beard is directed to face my feet. Stray hairs go against the grain. These bristles could easily be a nest for a robin, or whatever your birder self imagines. My lips are soft and plump; you can’t miss them. And of course, this mouth is shut for once.
Landing Site:
In the center of this image is a white cube. Above it is a pitch black sky. The cube is bright enough to illuminate the ground before it. Inside of the cube lies a sleeping person. Their back is facing forward and their features are hidden. Their feet are positioned on the left side of the cube and their head on the right. They are draped in a short navy blue blanket. The blanket looks to be silk with a golden lantern design. The blanket does not cover the person’s legs, and they are naked from the knees down. On the back of their left calf is a scar shaped like a chisel. The figure casts a faint shadow on the dirt outside of the cube. The dirt is a mix of yellow sand and dark soil with bone white chips layered within. In the sand there are series of drifts that form river-shaped lines that end in a blurry delta. The delta sand is dark and extends to the lower right corner of the painting. On the opposite side, the deep brown soil fades to a black shadow. The two bodies of sand and dirt meet in the middle, blending in a vertical zig zag pattern. From a further point of view, the small white chips in the soil appear like a constellation in the dirt.
Andy Slater
b. 1975, Milford, CT; lives and works in Chicago, IL
A New Self Portrait, 2024
Ink on paper
Landing Site, 2020
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist
What if access is the art? Andy Slater’s work critiques and foregrounds his experience with blindness through humor and sharp criticism. Originally working in sound and music (including the acid-soul band Velcro Lewis Group), Slater has expanded across disciplines to highlight disability and access aesthetics. Invisible Ink represents his exploration of art and alt text (written descriptions typically available only to blind and low-vision users via assistive technology). Many kinds of visual art are inherently inaccessible to blind and low-vision users. In this project, Slater invites all audiences to experience alt text, challenging traditional divisions between art and access. As he noted, “I've had people refer to this as sound art and I really don't want to consider it that. The audio is actually the accessibility and the text is the piece. But the text is the access. But the access is the piece.” By foregrounding an accessibility component as the medium itself, Invisible Ink asks: What if access is the art?
Artist Description
In this work, a series of wall labels are affixed to the gallery walls. The labels give the title, date, medium, and dimensions of several paintings in Slater’s Invisible Ink series. Below each label are headphones resting on small shelves attached to the walls. The headphones play audio descriptions of the paintings referenced in the labels. There are no physical paintings hung on the walls. [Text of the audio descriptions are also provided on a corresponding webpage, for anyone who cannot hear the audio.]
-- Description by JJJJJerome Ellis
Basic Description
A minimalistic white gallery wall featuring a small label and a listening station with headphones on the right. Next to the label and listening station is a painted white square onto the wall, that is a similar yet slightly off color to the white color of the main wall.