Conservator, Laura Neufeld: Wordplay is one of my favorite parts of Ed’s work. He said, “Words have temperatures to me, and when they reach a certain point and become hot words, then they appeal to me,” and that’s when he knows that he has to make a picture with those words.
“Thick blocks of musical fudge” is such a weird and evocative phrase. “Thick blocks,” so I can imagine the block of fudge, but what’s “musical” about fudge? It’s so confounding to try to put those things together.
Curator, Ana Torok: There’s a really beautiful rhythm to the words, and I think Ed is really attuned to how words sound. I think that’s a big part of his choice.
Laura Neufeld: In the work, those letters are reserved paper, so that’s where the sheet was masked. Then this chocolatey color of pastel has been rubbed into the background. And removing that masking, you get these perfect white letters. You almost expect, if you touched it, to have cocoa powder on your fingers. And the whole thing feels somehow both weightless and like this solid, dense, sticky block of fudge that the text evokes.