Frances Stark, who is also a writer and poet, often uses words or phrases as visual motifs in her compositions. Through the artist’s tracery, a line of text borrowed from a novel, poem or even a pop song will lead the viewer through the experiences that are the hallmark of her work: Words become an abstract design through repeated hand-tracing, while they cognitively but subtly introduce a subject, mood, and often the context of another discipline such as music, architecture, philosophy.