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As wire “quadrifoaled wireframe,” this new one was built one dimension at a time, but note that the implied distance with a size difference has already added a third dimension, so that the folded paper/space unites the three dimensions in what may be argued a fourth dimension. There is an outside-the-grid consideration with the text elements “year” and “ning,” which when fused become “yearning.” The distance between the two word-components is analogous to the distance between the two human beings depicted in the image.

A few decades ago the Phoenix Art Museum had an exhibit showcasing the work of Alexander Calder, who became famous for his Mobiles and Stabiles. The show included vodeo footage of Calder playing with doll-like circus characters he’d created from wire and cloth, and he was delightfully playful with them, e.g. making a growly lion-noise. The show also had some drawings of his that I at the time thought absurdly minimal and simple-minded. I remember muttering “He’s getting away with murder” when looking at a piece of newsprint of perhaps twenty square feet of area, upon which he’d drawn an arc across the width, and then placed a second arc near the middle, above the first arc and with points touching down near the fist arc’s crest. He might have drawn the arcs in a total of five seconds or so. Absurd, right? But he was demonstrating how quickly the human mind will convert the least pattern of line into anythin from a mountain sunrise to a close encounter of two spheres. In so doing, he informed my drawings, including this one.

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Image

This August 3rd morning I was scheduled to work solo at the Village Gallery from 10 to 2, which really means 9:45 to 2:05, since the cash register must be counted before opening the doors, and the baton must be passed to the relief before leaving. But it was a quietish day and I had plenty of time to sketch–and we artists are encouraged to practice our art during our shifts, busy-ness permitting. Consequently, by the time I left the gallery, I had the above image, which hadn’t even been a twinkle in my eye when I’d arrived.

First there was doodling, keeping the “Op Art” movement of about half a century ago in the back of my mind, but also bacterial or fungal growth. I used loopy/circular shapes and outlined the bejabers out of them, inside and out. By 11 AM the graphite “fungus” had spread throughout the scratch paper I was putting it on.

I then employed the shop copier to make a copy, leaving room to put the original in the blank extra space to make a copy of the copy and the original, upside down relative to the copy. This is a bit of a nod to Andy Warhol and his instant-motif image multiplicities.

The image needed a lot of embellishment to make it interesting. It also lacked soul; it had no more soul than wallpaper. So I hearkened back to my coloring-book days and filed in some of the whorls, first with highlighter (which smudged a little, and all to the good: I wanted to avoid the sterility of perfect fill-in) and then with mechanical pencil.

I still had “Op Art” in the back of my head, and, being stuck in the 60’s, it also occurred to me that with a snazzy bit of lettering, the image had poster possibilities. What to call it? Well, when I was doing the fill-in I imagined elements in the two panels being compelled toward each other–and the color choice and selectivity of the fill-in thus reflects a sort of yearning that almost everything that lives has in it. So “Yearning” would be a good title, and–bonus–by following the same drawing rules I’d (rather arbitrarily) decided on when I started, I could pull out “ye” (you) and “i” for a bit of found-art spice. I did the same thing with signature and date, yellowing “W ow” (Wow) and “Au” (chemical symbol for Gold).

Is it Art? Does it Work?