Photographs. Drawings. Video. Text. James Drake’s "Tongue-Cut Sparrows" is a massive undertaking, bringing together an astonishing range of arts media, created and developed over the course of 30 years (and still ongoing). As with so much of Drake’s work, this series has its origins in the borderlands of El Paso, where he lived and worked for decades. The project was sparked in 1994 by curiosity over witnessing a group of people (mostly women) gathered outside of the El Paso County Jail, moving, gesturing, and signing up toward the prison. He asked a friend about what was happening and discovered that these were family, friends, and lovers of prisoners, using an invented language of signs and gestures to communicate to their loved ones over distance, and without having to submit to the timetables, strictures, limitations, and scrutiny of official prison visits.Drake’s unique and diverse assemblage of art (artifacts?), in many media, drops us into the middle of a dialogue, a story.
