New Drawings, More Thoughts

I finally got to some drawing in the studio this week, thinking about what images are most important to me- which should come first. The night before I transcribed a few of my stories on the typewriter, typing directly onto very thin tissue paper that almost tore through with the keys, while sort of punching holes into the ink ribbon as well. There is something to this- the act of writing being so physical that it tears apart the paper and self-destructs along the way. I like this. And the end result it so ephemeral despite all the physical effort- the paper being so thin that it could float away, barely tacked to the wall with a stubby nail, the type partly faint, imperfect, and difficult to read.

These are my stories. And these are the images. I posted the tram car wheels last time, and recently finished a speaker hooked to a pole/tree from the abandoned amusement park.

I love the how wires underneath are curling up on themselves, as if it's poised to make a motion. I've been attracted to the image of the speaker projecting silence to nothing, nowhere, most likely since a few years ago I dreamt of a Victrola playing static to an empty room, and more recently I saw the disconnected speaker horn as disembodied voice in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse. Of course it's very much like Kentridge as well, as this sort of faceless authority/transmission figure. There is something about it being in the trees in this abandoned park, though, completely functionless and no longer threatening.

I also completed the image from overlooking the top of the dirt mountain road in my grandmother's country. It was the last morning I was there, and a typewritten story accompanies the piece. I climbed the top to say a sort of goodbye to the mountains (I miss them so) the shot-out red barn with a Chrysler logo and an elk sign tacked to it, and the old bath-tub-turned water trough amongst the jewel weed. It was the very beginning of fall, and a soft breeze was blowing and all the usual sentimental tropes- but there was this rattling sound that disturbed me. I thought someone was there, but I turn around to see nothing but a 25-mile-an-hour sign caught up in a tree.

There was something about that damned sign and that moment of realization up there on the hill. There is a lot of significance to this particular place, which I will get to later, but I had to begin to draw it, anyhow. I realize the sign isn't even visible and it looks like a simple landscape study, but this is somehow a step.

The biggest holdback now is to figure out how to display the drawings and the stories. Is this image format okay? Is everything up on a wall, fixed with nails, or does the viewer have the option to rifle through things and rearrange the narrative? Do the stories line up with corresponding drawings or is it all mixed up? Is there sound playing of my own voice reading these recollections? I definitely think I will include ambient noises that I've recorded on site, such as crickets, peep frogs, industrial sounds etc, and possibly some animation.

Anyway- enough pondering for one night. That is where I stand for now.... more to come.