Mon/o/syb/le   n. (Mono <Gk.<monos, single, alone + syble refers to: 1. syllable<Gk. sullable<sullambanein, to combine in pronunciation 2. sibyl<Gk.<sibulla. a woman prophet or 3. syble< in American pop lexicon, to have multiple personalities.) The reconfiguration of text into one and / or many characters. JonMarc Edwards was born in the prison town of Leavenworth, Kansas. As a child he moved frequently, traveling from rural to urban settings, never establishing deep roots in any one place or school. To alleviate the monotony of these moves, he and his sister would invent and play 'highway games'. The games were built around the road signs, mileage markers and billboards communicating, demarcating and, some would say, commercially exploiting the natural landscape. As this overview of JonMarc's work reveals, signs, images, and text have colored his work ever since. During the 1980's JME settled in Minneapolis, positioning himself artistically and physically between the two coasts. Influenced by his work in film and video he began to borrow the logos, images and icons of mass consumerism and combine them with abstract and organic forms found in painting and drawing to create a narrative structure of personal/mass communication. This ability to convey complex meanings through simplified shapes has continued to evolve over the past two decades. In 1990 JonMarc moved to Los Angeles and began to develop a body of work that integrated a visual dialogue between the artwork and viewer. Utilizing five basic principles JME created a pictographic language loosely referred to as Monosyble. Simply stated, Monosyble is a reconfiguration of text, compressing single words or word sequences into a new single form. Visually abstract but legible, it bears a resemblance to Chinese characters, Arabic calligraphy or Mayan script. This simple construct challenges the artist and thereby the viewer to look deeper into the content and form of words, images and ideas. Finally, we do not live by words alone. It is JonMarc's love/hate relationship with language and its limitations as a means of communicating "experience" that has led him to push text beyond its current bounds. By exploring text's physicality, its architecture, its nuances, and its capacity for metamorphosis JonMarc has developed a new form of communication, one capable not just of capturing an experience, but creating one. The work featured on this web site includes his paintings, prints and sculptures. JonMarc's work is included in collections such as the Walker Art Center, at&t, and General Mills. awards include the Bush Foundation Fellowship (St. Paul), Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (N.Y.), and the Jerome Foundation for emerging artists (Minneapolis). click here for resume