Justin Quinn's Moby Dick

[David Morris]

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/09/eeeeeeeeee_eeeeeee_eee.html

a fabulous exhibit that took place this past March by an artist named
Justin Quinn, who does beautiful, mysterious work with text. Quinn's
Moby-Dick series is made up of obsessively detailed prints and
graphite drawings composed entirely of the letter E. Each E
corresponds to a letter in a chapter of Melville's book, so each piece
is composed of literally thousands of characters. The effect is almost
that of a mosaic or a concrete poem. This series was shown at
MMGalleries in San Francisco and has since moved elsewhere (Miami
possibly?), but there are still a number of images online (also here).
Quinn explains his obsession with E:

The distance between reading and seeing has been an ongoing interest
for me. Since 1998 I have been exploring this space through the use of
letterforms, and have used the letter E as my primary starting point
for the last two years. Since E is often found at the top of vision
charts, I questioned what I saw as a familiar hierarchy. Was this
letter more important than other letters? E is, after all, the most
commonly used letter in the English language, it denotes a natural
number (2.71828), and has a visual presence that interests me greatly.
In my research E has become a surrogate for all letters in the
alphabet. It now replaces the other letters and becomes a universal
letter (or Letter), and a string of Es now becomes a generic language
(or Language). This substitution denies written words their use as
legible signifiers, allowing language to become a vacant parallel
Language— a basis for visual manufacture.

After months of compiling Es into abstract compositions through
various systemic arrangements, I started recognizing my studio time as
a quasi-monastic experience. There was something sublime about both
the compositions that I was making and the solitude in which they were
made. It was as if I were translating some great text like a
subliterate medieval scribe would have years ago—with no direct
understanding of the source material. The next logical step was to
find a source. Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick, a story rich in
theology, philosophy, and psychosis provides me with a roadmap for my
work, but also with a series of underlying narratives. My drawings,
prints, and collages continue to speak of language and the transferal
of information, but now as a conduit to Melville's sublime narratives.

http://www.mmgalleries.com/artists/quinn.html