A Book of a Number of Hours - The Carroll Studio Gallery

“I suppose…”

I suppose

Hand bound. 1965. Pen and ink on white Canson Paper. 5” x 6 3/4”. 31 pages.

In my fifth and final year as a student of the combined program at the Museum School of Fine Arts Boston (four-year diploma as painting major – the Museum School does not grant degrees) and Tufts University (BFA degree), I decided to take the combining of art and writing as my thesis project. [An evaluation it received read: “interesting.”]

A key feature of my dissertation was putting together this collection of abstract pen and ink drawings paired with relatively abstract writings. Some drawings that I saw as form of scripts in themselves were not accompanied with writing.

This little book, which shows some wear (as does the artist), is a unique expression in my history of integrating visual and literary components of my work.

This keen, lifelong interest has a long trajectory dating back to that first
hand bound book I made in Bill Miller’s high school art class. I refer to that seminal adolescent work throughout my archive contents.

The Dean told me later that that high school work had played a significant role in my being accepted to the Museum School.

And it truly marked my birth as artist and writer, in a sense my “works on paper.” I pause to think of how often I refer to myself as “Papyrusmann”. However much I appreciate the technology’s creative potential, I could never be “Computerman”.

This book from my adolescence carries the naturalist in me as well, although that third of my foundation had had its initiation some years before, with the first spotted turtle I encountered in the wild at age eight. [An experience highlighted in my Self-Portrait With Turtles, and portray in various ways in other writings.]

For my thesis I wrote on the integration of visual and written art – script itself so often an art – throughout human history. It is a (perhaps the) defining aspect of human culture, human essence, with roots even deeper than those of the renowned cave paintings and petroglyphs.

Our species seems always to have had the need to make and leave markings, expressions in images, symbols, arrangements of massive boulders, letters, and words. Records in writing and art.

A Book of a Number of Hours is a unique early statement in my oeuvre, yet it is not without implications for directions arising at various later junctures in my art and writing, and the combining of two disciplines. It has a key place in what has transpired, and what may yet transpire, in my creative work.

As I think of it, I see it as an odd and intriguing companion to my first hand bound book; perhaps a statement from a parallel world.

I see its greatest value as being a signal element in a comprehensive archival collection. At the same time, I view it as an expressive statement that is complete in itself, and that it might serve as an object on its own in a museum dedicated to the art of the book, or a private collection, and would be interested in discussing possibilities with those who would like to consider an acquisition

I would also be happy to provide images of all pages to interested parties.