Joel Swanson is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the complex relationships between language, materiality, and technology. Working across discursive media—from neon text-based sculpture and obsessively detailed works on paper to new media works and large-scale public art—he investigates how linguistic tools and technologies subtly but profoundly shape meaning. As director of the TYPO Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder's ATLAS Institute, where he serves as Associate Professor, Swanson leads experimental investigations into the boundaries of text-based technologies.
Unsurprisingly, Joel is the son of a nuclear engineer! We get into his upbringing in a Christian Conservative family, the influence of a caring teacher, his approach to public art, and his more recent embrace of more personal, punchy, and pink (but still clever, as always) art making. I've known Joel for a long time but it was a real treat to get to know him and his work better.
