30 Drawings
30 Drawings, 1997, scotch tape transfer, paper, glass, aluminum push pins, 170 in x 27 in
I don’t think I ever saw my grandfather on a morning when he wasn’t holding a folded and refolded section of the New York Times. Newpapers are intended to be read as he read them, quickly, intently, but for information and probably only one time. Another kind of reader, a close reader for whom information may be superflous, can find a place to live in almost any text.
This 30 page sequence of drawings on sheets of paper and glass was made from various sections of the Times using scotch tape as a direct transfer device to pick up traces of ink and fiber. The piece loosely describes a domestic narrative, by turns poignant and absurd but essentially tragic in nature. It is told through the kind of details most likely to be overlooked at the breakfast table including fragments of articles and photographs, and the graphic elements and empty spaces that define and separate articles from each other. I was engaged with the poetic possibilities of such things which, when re-presented, could create their own context.
I didn’t realize what was happening at the time but this piece became a sort of chapter of contents written in advance with many of the 30 Drawings leading to dedicated projects based on a particular drawing’s approach to the source material. The weather map led to Weather Drawings in pencil on Mylar. The “angry snapshot” of drawing 8, found in a news story, combined with drawing 25 became the Last Portraits, made from the obituaries section. Other projects whose beginnings are defined here include Wilt, the Marker series, and my work with the poems of Emily Dickinson, Alan Ginsburg, and Paul Celan.
