DIGITALIS:

of the finger

DIGITALIS took place at Handwork Galleries on ​November 4, 2023. Scroll down to learn more.

fingers. what are they for?

“the fingers must be educated, the thumb is born knowing.”

- marc chagall


fingers are capable of both assembly and disassembly. they ​are agents of creation and chaos, sublimation and shame. ​fingers can be used to elicit luck, evoke anger, or call for ​peace. despite these compelling contradictions — and the ​intimate involvement of fingers in many art-making ​practices — the fine art establishment rarely sees fit to shine ​the spotlight of attention onto the humble finger.


no longer.


DIGITALIS seeks to explore the ways our fingers shape the ​world and are shaped by it, through a deeper examination of ​the hand’s most charismatic constituents.

Leah Meyer

Aria, 2023

Interpretive violin


Limited live performances


In Aria, Meyer’s improvisational violin performances highlight the connections between mind and hand that allow instrumentalists to create and refine sound into the patterns that we recognize as music. Drawing inspiration from selected artworks featured in Digitalis, Meyer builds off the original pieces while emphasizing the multiplicity of our fingers’ ways of being. The intimate nature of Aria in particular encourages viewers to more deeply consider the physical aspects of music making, when compared to traditional, staged concerts.


Kelly Meza Prado

Californian Sky Vessel, 2021

Earthenware clay, altered coil


From the artist:

The 'Californian Sky Vessel' is a handcrafted clay creation that embodies my early exploration into pottery. Before my encounters with the throwing wheel, this piece was shaped through the traditional finger-pinching technique, fostering a deep connection with the medium. Crafted over several afternoons on my balcony under the deep blue Californian sky, it stands as a testament to my early journey as a potter. This vessel is cherished not only for its imperfections but also for the profound experience it encapsulates. The method employed in its creation seemed to slow down time, making the process of this creation vivid and etching the beginning of my artistic journey in my mind.

Jess Del Fiacco

crunch, 2023

Audio

Have you heard the schoolyard rumor that it takes the same amount of force to bite through a carrot as it does to bite through a finger? Maybe you dismissed it immediately. Maybe you told yourself it could never be true. But every time you take a bite, do you think a little too long about the crunch?


crunch explores the persistent, though sometimes subliminal, human desire to lean into the unsettling, to relish the weird, to peek through our fingers at the scariest part of the movie. Consider, for a moment, what urban legends or outlandish claims you cling to, even as you squirm in your seat.


Donna Carlson

Digits at Cran Fest, 2023

Photograph

Our fingers can be actors, too. In this piece, Carlson shows off their playful potential. The candid-style photograph and a different “costume” on each digit hints at the diverse personalities we can express with our hands.

Katie Kienbaum

Dis/Member 1-3, 2023

Fabric, yarn, found objects


Viewers are encouraged to touch and hold the sculptures.


In the Dis/Member series, Kienbaum explores the tension with which our bodies house uncomfortable fragility alongside inherent strength. The visible stitching and stuffing, frayed edges, and unexpected heft of her fabric fingers prompt consideration of our own temporary existence in this physical world, while the playful patchwork of materials encourage us to find levity in that realization.


Ryan Noe

Finger Lakes Rise, 2023

Styrofoam, paint, wood

The unique shape of the Finger Lakes, located south of Lake Erie in New York, invites us to ask, are these battle scars from a ferocious attack from the heavens? When constrained to traditional maps, the power of nature is flattened and subjugated. When the dimensionality of maps is questioned, we can see powerful fingers emerge from the Earth, and a new explanation arises: the claw marks are coming from within.


Maureen Kahn

Flight Test No. 3, 2021

Ink on paper

Hands can be tools, distal extensions of the body, operated by our brains. But they also house muscle memory that can seem separate and inaccessible from our conscious minds — taking on life as creators or beings of their own. See the frames of this drawing as an animation.

Sophie Averill

Fragmented, 2023

Paper, gemstones

Strong emotions, such as rage, can be felt more in the body than the brain. Just as one might experience in the heat of an argument, logic and explanation are buried in the negative space in Fragmented. Instead it’s the body that takes the lead. The strong focal point of the piece, the gesturing hand, expresses what the brain cannot.


Maureen Kahn

Hand (Rising), 2021

Ceramic

In this hand-built hand sculpture, the fingers extend upward in an expression of half-hearted longing or desperation. A moment of tentative expectation, unrealized.


Ryan Noe

Hand Tools to Finish the Job, c. 2017

Found objects

‘Handmade’ has connotations with quality, attention to detail, and bespoke demands. Hands are mythologized as tools, but fingers would be rendered bloodied and broken by many of the tasks they receive credit for. This collage recognizes the humble hand tools needed to finish the jobs we do not wish to subject our hands to.

Paige Skluzacek

Hands Off My Collage, 2023

Collage

This collage series showcases “hands.”

Karen Del Fiacco

Holding Hands With Finley, 2023

Plaster, wood

In Holding Hands With Finley, we are reminded of the power of skin to skin contact. A toddler holds his grandmother’s hand, a tender, fleeting moment in time captured in plaster.


Michelle Andrews

La mano del destino, 2023

Paper

Cartographers have long wielded the power of maps to chart new courses of human history. By their hands, nations have been carved out of the landscape and shaped events into the modern age. From the legacy of speculative fiction, I attempted to carve out a new world where we can appreciate the interconnectedness of hands that draw maps and the conclusions our minds draw when we observe the geography (both real and imagined) that was hand-picked to be included. Who lives on La Mano del Destino? How are their lives shaped by the tides? How are their lives formed by the interactions this map cannot possibly model?

Kat McCaffery

Love’s Notes, 2023

Found poetry

A torn page, a discarded scrap. Liberal use of night-black ink. Hands communicate in words what our mouths can – or may – not. What do you need to tell a friend, a lover, or even yourself that can only be said through these veiled means?

Bjorn Bergerson

Nurturing Fingers, 2014

Graphite pencil

From the artist:

In this graphite pencil drawing, I attempted to convey a profound connection between hands and the environment. I used a hand with tree roots at its base and leaves sprouting from the fingers as a metaphor for the transformative power of our actions. The piece symbolizes how our hands are both tools for shaping the world and encourag[ing] growth. It highlights our responsibility in cultivating a meaningful relationship with nature. Just as leaves sprout from the fingertips, our actions and creativity have the potential to nurture positive change and restoration in our world.

Sophie Averill

Outline, 2023

Paper, yarn

In Outline, the specter of the artist’s hand looms over the busy, layered background. It prompts us to wonder, how much of an artist is left behind in their work?


Jess Del Fiacco

pleased to meet you, 2023

plaster, spray paint, found objects

A proffered hand; your first moment of vulnerability with a stranger. Skin to skin, you calculate the motion: firm but not too firm, warm but not too warm, brief but not too brief. You make eye contact. You smile. You don’t notice what they have in their other hand.


Ryan Noe

Putting Your Finger on the Emotional Landscape, c. 1976 to present

Mylar, washi tape

Humans simultaneously exist in a physical landscape and an emotional state of being. Cartographers use maps to depict the world around us but do not plumb the depths of our sadness, survey our rage, or chart a path to joy. You are invited to explore finger-based cartography by bridging the physical and emotional landscapes. Point to the intersections of the landscape and your most intense moments of despair, anger, and happiness using the blue, yellow, and green hands, respectively.


Amy Teller

Blues, 2020

Sanitized/Raw, 2020

Love Hurts, 2023

Petite Bounty, 2023

Photographs

Though many of us may have two hands, our hands don’t live only two lives. They are gatherers and fighters, fashionistas and utilitarians. Teller’s autobiographical photograph series provides representation for our fingers’ multifaceted existences.

Hannah Parry

Palpation, 2023

Pencil on paper

What fingers themselves may lack in visual erotic appeal, they make up for it with the actual ability to arouse – and satisfy. Parry’s illustrations and their disinterest in the typical subjects of the sensual gaze bring to mind Naomi Uman’s experimental short film REMOVED, which erased the female forms in vintage porn by way of nail polish remover and bleach. Yet, the illustrations also point toward the release of self-directed pleasure, playing with the tension between permission and empowerment.


From the artist:

Palpation - “The process of using one’s hands to check the body… It is the process of feeling an object in or on the body to determine its size, shape, firmness, or location.”


Corina Bey

Swampus, 2023

Found objects, clay, paint

In Swampus, a fairy doll holds up a pair of hands made out of clay. The right hand points down and has sharp nails, while the left faces up with gemstones attached. Their difference reminds the viewer of the great potential – both positive and negative – we hold in our fingers.


Maria McCoy

Tarantula Nebula, 2023

Wool tapestry

Not content with Earth alone, humans have, over the centuries, pushed our knowledge, our sight, our bodies further into the deepest crevices and most unending corners of outer space. In this endeavor, we find not just the unknown but ourselves: scientists talk of fingers of gas and the “Hand of God” nebula These heavenly appendages can be seen also in McCoy’s weaving of the Tarantula Nebula, modeled on an image from the James Webb Space Telescope. However, the texture of the wool reminds us that from time to time we must come back down to Earth.

Jon Whear

The Toe Is a Digit Too, 2023

Audio/visual

From the artist:

The Toe Is a Digit Too is a one-minute audio/visual piece on the connection between the human digit and conscious experience. In a midwestern basement, appendages coalesce, allowing the collective to emerge a storyteller, reminding us that life, like music, is a beautiful tapestry crafted by our moments and choices. The toe, often shamed and relegated to the shadows, urges us to find harmony and meaning in the delicate dance of existence.


Gabrielle Morgenstern

Tiramisu, 2023

Cocoa powder, caulk, Halloween props

Tiramisu features severed lady fingers in place of their cookie counterparts. Dusted with cocoa powder, this gruesome treat alludes to domestic violence’s consumption of its victims.

Lily Gross

Tom’s Toothpaste, 2023

Print

Gross’s piece calls to mind sleepovers of adolescence past and adult present where the lack of a toothbrush has compelled makeshift use of a finger. The intimate angle of the photograph invites us to consider the tender, personal, and sometimes crude ways we use our fingers to care for ourselves and others.


Finley Averill

Untitled, No. 1-2, 2023

Paint on canvas

Even before we learn how to speak with words, we know how to speak with our hands. In these pieces, Averill, 2 years old, uses his fingers to tell a story with color and texture.


DIGITALIS featured art designed by Katie Kienbaum, base image by rattanachomphoo on Freepik