Joel and Kathryn Dart's "poetry.js: Code as Art"

Coming this February to Gallery No. 2 is a performance the likes of which the Harrison Center has never seen before. February holds great promise as encaustic artist Kathryn Dart joins her husband Joel in an installation pairing aspects of the visual with the JavaScript programming language. Bet you didn’t see that coming. Here is a little history: “Throughout my whole live I have always been a creative person dabbling in music, writing, and various other art mediums,” Kathryn Dart explained, “When I tried encaustic for the first time, I knew I had found my ‘thing.’ I started pursuing art more seriously, and quit my job to make it my full-time career about 5 years ago. Since then my work has evolved and become more sculptural—the texture and dimension of beeswax is what drew me initially—and I’m currently working toward more opportunities to do installation work.” Accompanying Kathryn is her husband Joel whom she describes as a computer programmer with an artist’s soul. “Joel has found his coding work to be surprisingly creative in nature, and he took that a step further by writing a series of poems using the JavaScript programming language,” Dart said, “He’s had the opportunity to present this project a few times, always to a very intrigued and engaged audience.” On Friday, February 6^th, the Darts will present a collaborative installation demonstrating the beauty that can be found in programming, complemented by the elemental nature of encaustic adding another layer of accessibility. “Joel has written the poems, and together we’ve come up with a way to present his concepts visually,” said Dart, “One of his poems will be projected onto a wall in the gallery. The projection will be an animation of the program running, visualizing what’s called an ‘infinite loop.’ One of my favorite aspects of this show is the way it demonstrates how beautifully two unexpected things can come together: poetry and code, an artist and a programmer, elegant wordplay and mathematic algorithms.” As Kathryn and Joel Dart come together in the creation of this show, the viewer will behold what they call an “inherent juxtaposition” seen in the beeswax as an organic, free-flowing medium that she seeks to restrict and control, and in computer programming being transformed into poetic language. Kathryn and Joel Dart’s show “poetry.js: Code as Art” opens Friday, February 6 at 6:00 in Gallery No. 2.