This is my second drawing that utilizes text. My first, OF WHOM HYAM had been a bit of an improvised project and one that had really emerged out of an accidental set of circumstances. When I wrote about it in 2018 I began to think about potential projects that might make me want to use this technique again. A photograph taken by poet and friend Gloria Monaghan and the poem her experience inspired her to write formed the basis; however, unlike OF WHOM HYAM, my adaptation of this project was very carefully planned. In fact I thought it over for almost 3 years.

 

I decided I would keep the lettering technique the same. But I wanted to make the presentation a more layered affair. It would be technically far more challenging. 

 

First, there would be two images: a base image of the scene at hand with a superimposed image of the red buds added without background. For the bud image I initially thought of using a pencil drawing I found in one of my great aunt Henny’s sketch books. I later rejected the idea, first because Henny had taken up more than enough space in my work in recent years. But more important I had just experienced some visceral reminders of how much I disliked overlaying imagery using different painting styles. I had visited the Rubell Museum here in Miami for my 59th birthday (an amazing experience BTW) There I had come face to face with a classic David Salle. My memories of reading art magazines during the neorealism panic of the early 80s came flooding back… No, I decided the image would be done in as close a style to the main image as possible. Plus I have always liked the random quality of accidental double exposures in film photography. The images live side by side like two independent clauses.   

 

I searched the internet for images of red buds and decided to use a tiny piece of one from an obscure source (that has now been lost in the mists of memory). I presume Gloria took the photo of this woman with her cell phone. It has all the grain and lack of resolution that I have become accustomed to compensating for. There is very little detail; nevertheless, I thought the intense gridline receding perspective made the dancing figure very compelling. I chose this particular branch (and, yes, it had to be a “branch”) because it had a shape I thought might mimic the diagonal of the YMCA hall baseboard. Also, I thought it might create an illusion of the woman and the buds dancing. There was a lot of sizing, cropping and tilting. I particularly liked the way a blank area in the branch allowed the woman’s head to push into the branch’s space. I also liked imagining the branch “holding” her raised left elbow. Of course, the primary goal was to have her seemingly reaching for the very top bud - about to take its hand, so to speak. 

 

The empty space of the overhead lighting haunted me. In the final day or two of work on this drawing Marsha had been rewatching an episode of the 1990s TV show ER (she likes the fact that the doctors appear human and seem to care. I know… pure fantasy) In this episode Dr. Abby Lockhart (Maura Tierney) shows administrator Frank Martin (Troy Evans) how to dance for his daughter’s wedding. Yes, it’s mawkish; but something about it works. Repeated viewings on YouTube made me realize just how striking expressions of joy or other exuberances can be in an institutional setting. And there was also that worm’s eye view showing off the drop ceiling and the lighting panels!

 

The second bit of layering I wanted was a color shift. I thought of doing the branch and the buds in realistic color; but I didn’t like that. Why should the buds be more realistic than the hallway? Not that color is more realistic. I essentially believe that “color is a lie” (a topic for another discussion) so “realistic” beiges and browns of tree foliage is not something I regard as more real. I ultimately decided to keep the magenta of the buds (red buds in my research appear red/violet) and make the rest of the branch black and white. Similarly, in the main image I decided to follow Gloria’s own choices. She mentions red multiple times. The color shifts are in the fire exit signs and the fire alarm only. I had briefly thought of retaining the blues of the woman’s sweater. I have memories of Gloria mentioning the bluebird of happiness in conversation. It would be emotionally satisfying, but, no. It would be only red. And red simply as a means of directing attention, nothing more. 

 

I tried to remember all the gimmicky examples I had seen of this kind of color shift in comics and film. Frank Miller’s “Sin City” kept coming back to me as an example of what NOT to do. It seemed a cartoonization, like indicating that a wall is brick by drawing the outlines of a few rectangles or showing a soap bubble by slapping on a curved 4 panel window in a reflection. I hate to say this, as I have often said Steven Spielberg is the aesthetic equivalent of a computer virus, but the girl in the red coat from “Schindler’s List” seemed the best example. It may be simply the technical means of isolating red in black and white film available in 1993 (don’t know, doesn’t matter) that created such a subdued red in this instance; but it is effective. The blacks feel hyper present. That style of showing red is still very much OF the scene - not added to it. In my project in fact it is the image of the branch and buds that is getting added. The magentas there are tempered by quite a number of warm grays but (to me at least) the black of the black and white experience is more subdued. And, perhaps it should be subdued. After all it is the image of imagining/memory and for that reason should be brighter overall.

 

And then there is the third type of layering: adding the text. As in OF WHOM HYAM the main figure is shown with no text, “presented straight.” She is the subject after all. Or maybe more specifically, the person that Gloria imagines her to be is the subject. Or, then again, perhaps it is the aesthetic representation that arose out of Gloria’s imaginary of her that is the subject. One begins to chase one’s tail here. 

 

So, yes, the dancer has no text; but I decided EVERYTHING ELSE would be subject to the embedded text. This included the reds in the buds. Without going into too much detail, this was an enormously difficult task. It meant constructing drafts with two parallel systems of indicating value. The reds of the buds were organized with color pencil while the B&W of the branch was done in markers. In the final drawing I had to do 3 separate checks before making each mark. First I had figure out whether the value at hand was a color or B&W value. Then I had to locate the position of any impinging letter to make the appropriate value shift. And, last I had to make sure I would not be intruding into areas of highlight from the second image. I realize as I am writing this that I am slipping into complaining about how hard my own chosen project was for me. Sorry. At one point Marsha said to me, “You might want to ask yourself if you’re actually enjoying this.” She had a point. So, yes, it was difficult. And the results are less than perfect. But I do enjoy that I stuck with it and got an acceptable result.

 

In the previous text drawing I had solved the problem of letter placement by simply repeating the same passage over and over. Here I decided that Gloria’s poem should be presented only once, and as completely as possible. This meant that I had to arrange the text so that as little of it as possible would be obscured by the figure of the woman (who has no text) Before going on perhaps I should mention something about the text. I believe I read it initially around 2015/2016 in a Facebook post by Gloria. She also posted the source photo on Facebook (I think) separately. Both posts made an impression; but when I saw the photo I made a mental note to come back to it. I had two of Gloria’s books of poems at the time and mistakenly assumed I would find the poem there. (I didn’t) I had to go back to search her page and type the poem myself. Time went by. Computers crashed. And files were lost. I realized when I turned to thinking about this project again in 2018 that I no longer had that typed file! I also had no idea where I could find the text!! Finally I found one printed hard copy buried under other files. I have no idea if the text in my one printed copy is correct. In fact I kind of like the idea that I may have transcribed it incorrectly. There are shades of Persian rug weavers deliberately including flaws… or the “clinamen” from Harold Bloom’s essay in The Anxiety of Influence. Grandiose BS… Still I like that the poem is my transcription  (accurate or no) of Gloria’s poem. 

 

But I did even more to Gloria’s poem. I scrambled it. I essentially made it one long massive enjambment. And the spacings I chose were meant to accentuate the existing motifs as well as introduce brand new ones. Arranging Gloria’s poem made me realize just how often certain words are repeated. Seeing these repetitions spread out in this eccentric way made me begin to think of the text as a kind of sestina. Words are repeated but take up different positions. Some examples: “of dance” on top of ‘dance of,” putting “love” next to “like.” I do believe it is possible to know the entire text (the brain can kind of supply the missing letters) But the severing of the normal structure makes the text seem more firmly embedded in the image. One has to pause slightly to make a deliberate effort to extract it from the imagery, to read it properly.

 

And this brings me to what may be the crux of the whole piece: to “extract” or to be able to assign meaning one is forced to engage in a form of violence, a breaking down of the drawing into its constituent parts.

 

I have made a case in many other places that my work is really about units: what units should we use to build large scale representations? I got sucked into the idea of the indivisibility of stippling dots for a long time; but they are just one kind of indivisible unit. Chuck Close died during the time I was working on this project. So I spent some time reviewing books of his work again. The finger print series of the early 70s had always made an impression on me. “His finger prints are all over that painting - literally.” In other words his choice of units, while seemingly random, originate in something that is indivisibly and in an essentialist way HIM. One can go back to the clinamen idea I referenced above. “Personality” or what we conceive as a collection of essentialist forces gives rise to form - even if it just in the act of making choices, this mark versus that mark. It’s all bit obvious and glib if one writes it out; but I do believe it is important to explicitly state something this basic before proceeding.

 

Despite my idiosyncratic technique of installing text through perceptible value shifts, most of the image I’m capturing remains. And that image is much the same whether it is an A or a G that is embedded in the value. The lettering is like the mesh of a net. The image remains visible behind the gauzy veil of letters. But letters aren’t really one of those essentialist things I mentioned. Yes, language is alive and changing - blah, blah; but these particular marks are a social construct. They mean agreed upon things. 

 

I sometimes think of the text in its totality to be a form of ideology, even if that ideology is just empathy. Could we look at this dancing woman in the same way without Gloria’s poem? The poem is Gloria’s imagining, constructing a sort of origin story for the movement she saw in that hallway. Gloria’s poem is complete. It does not need Gloria’s photo or my drawing of it. In fact I would say it is more powerful without either. My drawing is about Gloria’s experience, yes. It is also about the way Gloria chose to transform her experience into symbols and written expression. And maybe more accurate, my drawing is about the general human impulse to do such things. Of course, I’m engaging in the same impulse. There is the poem. There is the fleeting image that of that hallway moment. And finally there is the image of one of Gloria’s chosen visual symbols - red buds on the branch - I made manifest. 

 

As I began to think about flowers, just in general, it occurred to me that (along with birds) nations and states like to declare these organisms as official totems. They are visualizations of the very abstract. Thinking back on Gloria’s larger body of work I was also reminded of how often not just these two symbolic motifs recur but also of the frequent mention of Catholic saints. One can go down the rabbit hole of reconsidering the iconoclastic controversy but instead I chose to think of the saints as means of approaching yet another abstract idea: divinity.

 

Over the years I have grown more passionate about a belief that what we see is not complete. In fact if you are unfortunate enough to get me started I can become very animated and sometimes angry. How do I get at what is truly there?! There’s an element of college dorm stoner conversation to all this, I know. But I really mean this! I want to get at IT but I know that I can never get it in a way that is truly complete. Instead I choose my building units, my dumb marks, my dots, my blocks of consistent value, my letters - whatever is at hand - as my intermediary. Perhaps these intermediaries are my “saints.”

 

When I first began to draw at 17 my first projects were illustrations of my own writings. Some were essays. I even briefly turned to poetry. I would write out this stuff adjacent to the drawings using a simple block lettering technique. I think high school age Gill thought it looked cool. I later became embarrassed by this and turned instead to graphic novels with no such text. Then, even later, I began this kind of work. I find it interesting that after some 40 plus years I have come back to letters once again.

 

The process has made me think of all kinds of things. Rather than try to incorporate these fragments into a more coherent narrative I thought I would be better to simply list them here.

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The third possible text I considered for a drawing back in 2018 had been a poem written by a college girlfriend, Nicole Halpin. She fancied herself a poet. I fancied myself an artist. But neither was very impressed with the other’s work (with good reason perhaps) When Nicole died of a brain tumor in 2011, her sister posted a few of her poems on social media. I remember being impressed that Nicole had stuck with it and had become much more accomplished than I could have imagined. I was particularly impressed by a poem about her observation of a teenage boy and girl at a bus stop. She had obviously watched them from afar and engaged in a similar kind of imagining of their respective circumstances. Sadly other family members objected to sharing these poems. They are no longer public so my experience of them is now just a vague set of impressions. Such is memory. I had been impressed by the concision of her language but even more I was taken with the seeming tenderness of Nicole’s impulse to imagine her subjects. I was reminded of that poem when I first read this one by Gloria.

 

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And these are “imagined” worlds right? I often thought of that Wallace Stevens line

 

“The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.”

 

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And then there is that poem by Stevens about a letter… I often read this piece of analysis.

 

"that the artist can do nothing else but select out of life the elements to form a 'fictive' or fictitious reality. But this is not necessarily a higher reality; he is unable to take any moral category for granted. It is merely the artist's reality. And as such it becomes disintegrated against the banal, the ordinary, the commonplace, which is every-day reality. The result of this disintegration of the artist's personality is to be found in the poem which is entitled 'The Comedian as the Letter C....'"

 

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Then there is that fake Ecclesiastes quote from Jean Baudrillard

 

"The simulacrum is never what hides the truth-- it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true,”

 

Is true meaning only what Nicole, Gloria and I choose to designate, to imagine, to make manifest…?

 

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And there is that line which has haunted me ever since I first saw the film adaptation of “The World According to Garp.”

 

“I like that. If that's what it means, I like it.”

 

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The film “Arrival” had recently turned up again and again in my late night channel listings. I am a long standing time travel story guy. This could be quite the tangent; but what I liked in this film is the way that the Amy Adams character comes to a fuller perception of time, its persistence and her continuing presence in all moments of her own life concurrently. She comes to this perception or understanding by learning the language of the film’s alien visitors. The language gives shape and wider perception to the character’s thoughts. It is a liberating idea. A new language gives rise to the possibility of new modes of thought. I like it; but I think I am expressing almost the reverse view here. I am using the structure (or constraints) of our own language and alphabet to give shape to the visual - “there being nothing else.” Think of a vase giving shape to a volume of water.

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I had recently reread Kurt Vonnegut’s “Bluebeard.” The secret in the barn is the abstract painter Rabo Karabekian’s enormous and highly detailed representational painting. After a career as a celebrated abstract expressionist, this highly mimetic representation of a moment in his past is what dominates. We have eyes, this is what we see, why fight it?

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And finally T.S. Eliot’s 

 

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”

 

I guess I have finally begun to think of fragments as not necessarily “ruins.” Every construct we make has its constituent parts. Why not embrace these fragments and view them not with sadness but as our choices. What else do we have?