Field Language—The Painting and Poetry of Warren and Jane Rohrer
It was an extraordinary honor to be invited to contribute an essay to this publication, which has just been released from The Palmer Museum of Art. The artist Warren Rohrer (1927-1995) was the single biggest influence on me as an artist. In addition to my essay, one of my works is reproduced in the catalogue as well as one of my photographs of a rural location that served as a place of inspiration for Warren Rohrer. I continue to relate personally with Jane Rohrer and the rest of the family.
Field Language presents the work of an extraordinary couple who together left the rural lifeways of their Mennonite upbringing to go “into the world” to create forms of modern art that reflected on the places and culture they came from. Published on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition devoted to the working relationship between abstract painter Warren Rohrer and his wife, poet Jane Turner Rohrer, this sumptuously illustrated book explores the Rohrers’ painting and poetry in relation to their biographies and to the nature of modernism and modernity.
The artists, poets, and historians contributing to this volume present a variety of perspectives on the Rohrers, situating their work within the context of modernism, the changing agricultural landscapes of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and the aestheticization of local craft practices. Through the work of these two highly original and creative artists, Field Language invites readers to consider relationships between global art movements and local visual cultures, issues of land use, the sustainability of rural communities and cultures, and our own relationships with agricultural landscapes, seasonal change, labor, and human need and desire.
In addition to the editors, the contributors include Christopher Campbell, Steven Z. Levine, Nancy Locke, Sally McMurry, Janneken Smucker, William R. Valerio, Jonathan Frederick Walz, and Douglas Witmer.