Cat Got Your Tongue Again?

The charcoal and pastel drawing Cat Got Your Tongue?, was begun a few years ago and I thought that it was finished, as it served its purpose at the time. With the approach of my two person exhibition, however, Cat now serves a newly revised linguistic purpose. My two person exhibition with Una Kim, Transformations and Translations: The Art of Una Kim and Janet Kozachek, will be permeated with all kinds of language and cultural ironies.

For this reason, my revised Cat Got Your Tongue? Now incorporates word play. Looking closely at the tongue of the cat you can see a Chinese character. It is the word teng, a verb meaning "to transcrib." Teng happens to sound like "tongue." Hence the cat not only has your tongue, he has your teng, too, and you are literally at a loss for words. The pearl necklace underneath the poor figure whose tongue is being bitten also sports Chinese characters. These are also pronounced teng (remember sounds like "tongue"), but are words for pain. A cat biting your tongue would be painful.

  A last verbal pun is included on the final pearl, which also reads teng, but is the word for "gallop." The Chinese language is known for homophones, with an infinite potential for puns, some of which fortunately sound like English.