Both this and In Case of Emergency were small scale drawings that came out of a few visits to the visitor's gallery of the Chicago Board of Trade.  I had hoped that I might be able to capture a trader or (better yet) traders abstracted from their immediate environment into an experience of  computer screens or telephones.  They obliged, of course. There were examples of the wild gesticulating one expects (cliche) as well as scenes of epic boredom. The boredom, its own form of abstraction, eventually began to interest me more than the frenzy.  Here I was trying to juxtapose a bit of both. Trader 617 is asleep.  The other guy, however,  seems connected and engaged. Yes, but connected to what? Asleep or on a leash - quite the choice.

 

This is a very small piece; nevertheless, I had hoped to use much larger stippling dots - similar in scale to what I had been using in my oversize work at the time.  Instead, I wound up using dots of all sizes so as to capture little details like the phone cord and the office machines. Yes, we can tell what these devices are. We can even read the isignia. Still, I think the jumble of different sizes of dots created a bit of a chaotic feel and the overall composition sometimes breaks down into piles of abstarct shapes.

 

DRAFT