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Words and Letters

January 2 – February 28, 2026

SRAC’s bi-monthly exhibit of Small Works

Words and Letters are the featured subject for our next Small Works show. Hieroglyphics to graffiti, Picasso to Brillo pad boxes – today words are wedded to art and artists are still pushing the boundaries in paintings, photographs, printmaking, sculpture, and ceramics.

Words are a very old feature of art. Recall ancient hieroglyphics and illuminated manuscripts. It might be said that our words grew out of the creation of art, even as words and art seemed to diverge many millennia in the past. Words returned to the canvass in the early 20^th century when artists like Picasso and Braque incorporated letters and words from periodicals or labels into their paintings. The use of words exploded with the development of conceptional art when the idea behind the art began to have greater meaning.  Pop Art took the use of language, from Brillo pad boxes and Campbell Soup cans, to another level. And today artists push boundaries by projecting words into paintings and photographs and even on to the sides of buildings. Street artists, too, rely heavily on text to amplify their works.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat article 12/2/26

New Santa Rosa art exhibition explores the power of words and letters