Pat Boas’ work examines the play between word-as-image and image-as-word, sometimes looking for the poetry that lies embedded in the strange physicality of familiar graphic marks and sometimes searching out the “automatic writing of the world.” Idiomsyncretic brings together a collection of drawing projects that explore the nature of signs and the activity of reading using sources that include the tradition of natural history illustration and the New York Times.

An artist based in Portland, Oregon, Pat Boas has exhibited her work at the Portland Art Museum, the Boise Art Museum, the Salt Lake Art Center, the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, Wyoming and Seattle’s Consolidated Works. She is the recipient of several grants and awards for her studio work and has written articles and exhibition reviews for Art Papers, Artweek and artUS. Boas teaches drawing and painting and is faculty chair of the Master of Fine Arts Program at Portland State University.

A lecture will take place on Thursday, September 11, 2008 in Folk Hall at 6 p.m.