From Dexter to Sinister

The Brooklyn-based artist Sarah G. Sharp has launched a cool project that re-imagines the links between heraldry, class, and power. Her collaborative series, “From Dexter to Sinister: Exquisite Blazonry for the Disenfranchised,” pairs visual artists (crest-makers) with writers (blazon-makers). A blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms that enables any artisan to recreate its image. Each of Sarah's crests will be blazoned by a writer, then newly constructed from the blazon—as an object, video, etc.—by a different artist.

Here is Crest VII and the blazon I wrote for it:

Quarterly nut and striped of nut and argent, in the first a toothed mountain sable, in the fourth an owl’s wing teardropped purpure on sable, in the second and third the slanta rays of a night-day sun.


“From Dexter to Sinister” will be included in the exhibition Here, There and Everywhere, part of the next Transcultural Exchange Conference (Boston, April 8-10, 2011).