Richard Hart's career as a graphic designer has been a twenty-year love affair with letterforms, words, text and language. Lingua Franca takes this relationship into a gallery context and allows Hart to unhitch his craft from the imperatives of graphic design. Freed from the need to communicate to a mass audience, Hart's work engages intimately, using materials and techniques far removed from the traditional media associated with graphic design. Lingua Franca uses sculpture, assemblage, drawing, painting, photography and installation to create a world of words that is by turns emotive, poignant, funny, provocative, clever, silly and absurd.