On Drawing Itself

So already, throughout the pandemic on Monday and Tuesday nights, bolts of imagination have streaked across the cybersphere toward my cellphone. At around 10:15, a telltale “ping” generally signals that my husband Scott* has just messaged me a few photographs of drawings he’s done that night in his studio.

Though Scott generally describes himself as a painter, he has drawn more than painted during the pandemic when models, for the sake of everyone’s health, have had to Zoom into this studio/online classroom rather than pose breathing, masked, and life-sized before him. Frequently, the models do “short poses”—maintain the same pose for no more than ten minutes—which means that most of Scott’s drawings are “finished” first drafts that he immediately sets aside to move on to the next act of creation.

Drawing in this way, Scott doesn’t have much time to think or plan; what happens on his paper is the result of a quick, wordless interaction among his eye, his brain, his hand, and, of course, the observable something the model presents to all three. On the occasions I’ve asked him what he’d been thinking while drawing a particular drawing—please note, I’ve just used “drawing” as both a noun and a verb—he’s told me he wasn’t thinking. On some level, I can believe that. Then again, in his quest to get me not to over-think, he often tells me he’s not thinking.

Recently, I’ve been wondering about the sources of drawings, Scott’s and other people’s. Because often I’ve used the words “draw” and “drawing” multiple times in the same sentence as I’ve been trying to formulate my questions, I’ve started thinking about those words themselves. In other words, while being drawn to understand from where artists’ drawings are drawn, I’ve become curious about the word “drawing” itself.

So a few observations about the drawing-related innards of my last sentence. First, my first “drawn” and my second “drawn” don’t mean precisely the same thing. Second, “drawings” is a plural noun denoting the products of the activity of “drawing”—a gerund. Third, there are a couple of conspicuous usage absences in this sentence, in particular those of the present participial (drawing) and past participial  (drawn) forms of the verb “to draw,” as used to convey the act, present or past, of making a sketch or picture.

I know; my observations—even of what’s not there—seem so nerdy and nitpicky. But I love thinking about words’ meanings, etymologies, and uses—not a surprise, given that I am a Jewish retired English teacher who writes blogs and poems. So many words in Jewish texts are imbued with multiple layers of meaning**, inviting all to wrestle with their potential to open doors to the often elusive combination of divine connection and personal possibility and responsibility. In this context, words are like rabbit holes (or rabbi holes!), drawing us down into their fruitful complexity before, ideally, releasing us to the everyday, above-ground world with a greater sense of something simultaneously focusing, enlarging, and galvanizing.

When I sat down the other day to begin writing about “drawing,” I named my Word document “Drawing Itself”—just to distinguish it from anything I might write about particular drawings. But the minute I did that, my inner grammarian wondered, “Who or what is (or was) drawing itself?” That added another layer to my questioning.

With all of these things in mind, I began thinking about the range of things that people draw. They don’t only draw pictures. They also draw blood, water, raffle tickets, swords, and guns—lots of physical things, including, on some occasions, lots. In addition, they draw mental things such as distinctions, conclusions, blanks, and lines (in the sense of “the line” when they’ve had enough of something or someone).

Then there are the things that draw people, allowing them to describe themselves as “drawn to” or “drawn by”: the edges of cliffs or water, their soul mates, street musicians playing with feeling and skill, politicians making promises, great-looking shoes in a store window, three-layer chocolate cakes or thick slices of watermelon sitting on a counter.

I had a fleeting “world peace” thought as I contemplated these disparate items and ideas: wouldn’t it be great if when people drew guns, other people thought only to draw near in order to see how those guns were being sketched?

As the active and passive uses of “draw” multiplied in my mind, I headed to the Word Hippo web site to find all its definitions, and then to the Online Etymology Dictionary. The Word Hippo*** web site, with its almost two pages’ worth of definitions, nearly overwhelmed me with all of the ways and places the word could be used. But the Online Etymology Dictionary**** quickly refocused me.

According to the OED, drawing in the sense of making pictures was called “drawing” because one essentially dragged or pulled, thus drew, a pencil, crayon, or other implement across a piece of paper or other surface that retained its mark. That use of the word dated to roughly 1200. The use of “draw” to describe the pulling motion one used to remove a sword from its sheath was slightly older, dating from the late twelfth century. Quickly I understood that “The pen is mightier than the sword” worked even better than I’d ever thought or taught. It didn’t just symbolize the functions of two similarly shaped objects to create an excellent example of metonymy; the pen and sword were also connected because both were actually physically wielded—drawn—in similar ways.

Still, that information about the physical motion of drawing didn’t help explain individual drawings’ sources and inspirations. I thought about Scott, how seriously he takes drawing; he might even be lost without it. That thought focused me on the two items on my list most critical to life itself, water and blood. The Word Hippo web site defines “lifeblood” both literally and figuratively, offering as its figurative definition “That which is required for continued existence or function.”***** 

Are Scott’s drawings drawn from some essential subcutaneous, subconscious or quasi-conscious inner psycho-spiritual place or source, his “lifeblood”?*(6) And if that’s the case, is Scott drawing himself when he draws a model? Or, is it that Scott is drawing from himself when he’s drawing from a model? I don't know.

 

Wikipedia says that the two hands in Escher’s “Drawing Hands”*(7) are engaged “in the paradoxical act of drawing one another into existence.”*(8) 

Do we create ourselves by creating? If we do, I suspect it’s generally a private affair. Meanwhile, our creations, once loosed into the world, have their own lives beyond us, meaning whatever they mean to those who experience them. I can't say that they're experiencing us to any significant degree just because they're experiencing our creations.

Frankly, I'm pretty sure these questions and my musings wouldn't matter much to Scott, though they'd interest him: he is, understandably, too busy engaging with his imagination and materials--making art, not thinking about why or "why this." But they do matter to my non-artist self. I believe that when we are fully engaged in creating, whether we're drawing or writing, we experience ourselves, drawing from ourselves as we necessarily do. And experiencing ourselves is important.

 

* Scott Ketcham: www.scottketcham.com [Just so you know: Very few of his drawings are on his web site at this time--he hasn't had time to take really good photos of them yet.]

** And there’s a whole other layer to this because in Jewish mysticism, the individual letters of the words themselves are in part responsible for these various possible meanings. 

***What does draw mean? WordHippo. (n.d.). https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of-the-word/draw.html 

**** Harper, D. (2012). draw (v.). Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=draw.  

***** What does lifeblood mean? WordHippo. (n.d.). https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of-the-word/lifeblood.html 

*(6) The usage of “draw,” in the sense of to draw blood, dates roughly to 1400, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. 

*(7) Brooks, K. (2018, February 15). M.C. Escher's "Drawing Hands". BYU Museum of Art. https://moa.byu.edu/m-c-eschers-drawing-hands/. Image: M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands. Copyright 2017 The M.C. Escher Company, The Netherlands. All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com 

*(8) Wikimedia Foundation. (2020, December 19). Drawing Hands. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_Hands.

Sight Lines: An Original Short Story

So already, about four years ago, I began working on a short story: it had been roughly fifty years since I'd written one. Since 2017, I've tried to finish it several times--and recently, I actually did. So I present "Sight Lines" to you in hopes that you'll want to read it and be glad you did. For planning purposes, please know it's about ten pages long, double-spaced as a Word document. And while it might be especially interesting to students and educators--teachers in particular--I hope it will interest non-educators, too.

So here's the plan: first, I'll share with you, as I've already begun doing, photos of three art works that appear in this story, which takes place in a museum. Then I'll share the story. And finally, I'll talk about the genesis of the story.

I. The Photos

• "Duck, Duck, Noose" by Gary Simmons*
 • "Sleep" by Kehinde Wiley**
• "Long Jump by Carl Lewis" by Henry Taylor*

II. The Story

 Sight Lines

    Nine wooden stools, each topped by a white Klan hood and mask, all arranged in a circle. At the center of the circle, a noose hanging from the ceiling. The eyeholes of the masks looked blankly toward the noose. Beside one of the stools, a rope lay coiled, ready.

    The installation was the first thing people saw when they entered the exhibit. It definitely set the tone, Dena thought. She had come to the art museum on that January morning with her husband and father-in-law. But as soon as the two of them had seen the high school students gathered near the stools, they’d hightailed it into the next room.

    Dena had stayed because of the teenagers. Sixteen-year-olds, she thought. She’d taught high school for more than thirty years, so she could guess at the excitement and anxiety surrounding this field trip.  No doubt the teacher was hoping every kid would see something that they just had to tell a parent or friend about. No doubt every kid was glad to be out of the school building, but was also wishing that some friend in another class had been able to be on the trip, too.

    The kids were looking at the installation silently; Dena suspected that they’d been directed to. There must have been twenty of them. They stood in a jagged line generally two people deep, all of them clutching cellphones. Most of them were White. Six of them looked to be Asian. And two of them were dark-skinned. Dena was pretty sure the two dark-skinned kids were African-American. The boy stood in the front row in the middle of the line; the girl stood on the far edge of the group in the back row, directly behind a White girl, a redhead with amazing hair.

    Dena stared for a minute, trying to figure out that hair. A thick purple and bronze band, or maybe a braid, circled the girl’s head; was it her own hair, synthetic hair, textured metallic cloth—or some combination of these? Whatever it was, it would have been perfect for that Swedish festival in December when girls wear wreaths with candles on their heads.

    There was bronze in the African-American girl’s hair, too—touches of it, the result of small, rounded beads braided into her hair close to her scalp. They framed her face subtly, glowing in ceiling light aimed slant at the installation. Maybe she and the red-haired girl were friends—Sisterhood of the Braided Hair.

    Both girls were silent, like the rest of their classmates. The red-haired girl stood rigidly, staring almost straight ahead. The African-American girl divided her time between looking and writing, or maybe drawing, in a little black notebook that rested on her phone. Dena wondered if she’d chosen her spot in order to have an unobstructed view of the installation. Or whether she usually stood on the edge of things so her very stuffed backpack wouldn’t hurt someone if she turned around fast. That backpack surprised Dena; most museums wouldn’t have allowed it in a gallery.

    There were two adults with the students, both middle-aged White women. Dena tried to figure out which was the teacher and which was the museum educator. Docents had become museum educators when they began spending more time asking people about the art they were seeing than telling them about it. That’s why it didn’t surprise Dena that the students were being asked to look long before saying anything. Not that she’d heard anyone ask them to do that. The installation was so emotionally blunt and sharp; would the students would be able to push their reactions aside and just describe what they were seeing? 

    With that thought in mind, Dena pushed herself just to observe, as the kids were doing. The hooded stools, she noted, outnumbered the noose nine-to-one. That was the ratio of light-skinned to dark-skinned kids in the field trip group, too.

    Oh, already she was straying from observing, she realized. She decided to estimate how far from the floor the noose was—was it at the height of a human neck? But now it was the bright red in the big painting on the wall beyond the installation that drew her attention. The athlete at its center was wearing a bright red uniform. His brown skin was so dark it was almost black, and there was a lot of bronze in the painting, too.

    Realizing she wasn’t going to stay focused, Dena gave up and thought about the field trip. The teacher must have anticipated that some art in the show might be about racial violence, given that it was all by African-American artists. And hopefully, since it was halfway through the school year, the kids had some experience with discussing topics that brought up strong emotions.

    Just then, the two adults nodded to each other and began moving to the front of the group. Silent looking time was over, and Dena knew she wanted to listen to what got said next, even though she’d be eavesdropping.

    “Okay, everyone, let’s everyone cluster together just a bit more. We’re about to begin sharing."

    Dena positioned herself in front of a painting not too far from the group, pretending to be absorbed in it. It was likely, Dena thought, that the two Black kids would be affected differently than their classmates by the installation; it was also likely that some of the other kids would speculate about what the Black kids might be feeling. Dena realized she was making assumptions about the kids, and assumptions were almost always trouble. But these were difficult situations for teachers. On the one hand, you had to be ready for students’ emotional reactions, especially since some content was more personal for certain kids. And on the other hand, people are different--you couldn’t know how individual students would feel just because they happened to belong to some group or other. All of this went better if you knew your students and they knew each other. Which didn’t mean it always went easily or well.

    “Now that you’ve had a while to take this piece in, can anyone tell me what you’re thinking and feeling, and why? It would be great to hear from a few of you.”

    Dena hadn’t expected the discussion to begin this way—so personally. What had all that silent looking been about? Had the kids already done the physical description step before she’d entered the gallery? Maybe the whole activity had gotten off to a late start, so the museum educator had decided to combine a few steps. That way, this group would be ”done” with the installation before the next group arrived.

    Whatever was the case, the kids seemed uneasy—or maybe it was disengaged. Silence. Then more silence, or maybe it was more a shuffling as kids shifted their weight, reached into their pockets, looked up rather than around since even accidental eye contact with the teacher might have gotten them called on. The African-American girl stepped away from the group and snapped a photograph.

    The teacher and the museum educator scanned the group, both of them looking long at the Black boy in the front row as they searched for volunteers. He was looking down. Dena wondered if he’d looked down as soon as he’d heard the question because he’d known they would look at him. She smirked to herself for a moment: wouldn’t it be great if he or some other kid spoke up right now and said, “This piece of art really makes me feel good”? What would they do then?

    Looking up, she noticed the girl with the backpack was looking at her. The girl had a flat, serious look. Maybe she was reprimanding Dena for her obvious nosiness, telling her to mind her own business. Maybe she was wondering why Dena was smiling. Or maybe she was tired of clueless, earnest adults who always asked questions that were too direct. As if kids always knew right away exactly how they felt and wanted to tell everyone about it.

    Dena didn’t look away, though she wanted to. When the girl finally turned back toward her little notebook, Dena didn’t know what to think. Did the girl think of her as just one more of those White people who always looked at the nearest Black person when anything about race came up? Dena knew that she’d done that too many times as a teacher, even when she’d tried not to. It was ironic since when she was in high school, she’d hated how most of the eyes in the room turned toward her, the Jewish girl, when the Holocaust was mentioned to see if she would quiver or even shatter.

    One of the White boys spoke up finally. The installation made him angry, he said. He’d learned a lot about Jim Crow recently and understood why African-Americans didn’t feel safe to this day. “A lot of the Klan supported Trump; they’re still very active,” he reminded the class.

    “I wonder if the artist is talking about lynching metaphorically as well as literally,” said the Asian girl who spoke next. “Also, I wish I knew if the number of stools is significant.” Dena waited for the museum educator to acknowledge the girl’s implicit questions, even if it wasn’t the time to answer them. Then she looked to see if the teacher was writing them down for later. But the teacher wasn’t. Hopefully, she had a good memory.

    A White girl spoke next. “My mother grew up in the South,” she explained, “And she heard lots of racist comments while she was growing up. She even thinks some of the people in her family took part in lynchings, though no one ever said so. So looking at this makes me feel kind of uncomfortable, like . . ..” She hesitated. “No, I’m done.”

    More silence, some shuffling of feet and repositioning of things in bags and pockets. The teacher and the museum educator scanned the group again, while the girl with the backpack stepped back again and took another photograph.

    “I’ll go next,” said the Black boy in the front row. “I really don’t like this piece very much. It’s not that this artist isn’t talented or that this isn’t a good idea. But it kind of steals the show. Why are we looking so hard at this and not at something else?”

    “Thank you, everyone,” said the museum educator. “Let’s move on.” Another question not acknowledged, a good one for anyone in the business of helping students visit art exhibits with lots to choose from in them. Dena fixed her empty gaze on the painting she’d been pretending to look at and hoped the kids would have the chance to discuss the installation later in the day, or maybe tomorrow. But was the discussion over for now because an African-American student had finally spoken?

    Slowly the class moved toward the door in the corner behind them. The girl with the backpack was the last to leave the gallery, hanging back to take a few more photos now that she could stand directly in front of the installation with no one in front of her. She paused one last time to look at it without the camera before her eye, and then walked toward the other room without looking anywhere near Dena.

    Dena walked to the last spot where the girl had stood. It really wasn't the front of the installation, but it was the place where a card with the names of the work and the artist was mounted on a small pedestal. “Duck, Duck, Noose,” Dena read. She wished the kids had had a chance to talk about that title.

    Dena looked again at the installation, thinking of the children’s game: if you don’t get a seat, you’re out. That’s when she noticed. From that spot, the noose superimposed itself on the neck of the athlete in the red uniform in the painting behind the installation that she’d noticed while she’d been trying to look only at the installation.

    Damn!

    She moved a few steps to the left, and it got worse. From that new angle, the athlete—his red uniform said USA—looked like he was jumping into the noose to hang himself. Was this what the girl had stayed behind to get a picture of?

    Dena was now thinking of the painting, not the girl. Was the athlete an actual member of a Team America? She approached the painting and read the card adjacent to it. Yes. This was a painting of Carl Lewis. Track and field Carl Lewis. He was mid-air because he was doing the long jump. This was a painting to commemorate his Olympic achievement.

    This made it even worse. The curators had to have known about this. In fact, they must have done it on purpose, thinking it would make the exhibit “better.” Camus had said something in The Plague about good intentions that did harm. But when Dena tried to remember it, all she came up with was mangled Robert Burns: The good intentions of mice and men gang aft agley.

    Suddenly, the gallery began to fill up with teenagers again: the next school group was beginning to gather at “Duck, Duck, Noose.” Dena wanted to grab their teacher and urge him to have them look at something else. But how could she quickly explain why to him without seeming unhinged?

    At this point, Dena’s only consolation was knowing the exhibit would be closing in two days, putting an end to the lynching of Carl Lewis. Still, someone needed to write a letter about this. Dena was wrestling with the question of where the letter should go—to the museum or the newspaper, or maybe even the artist—when she realized she was paying more attention to the letter than the exhibit. She resented that: when else would she get to see the exhibit? And then she felt ashamed: there were worse problems a person could have than being distracted while looking at an art exhibit.

    Finally, wondering how her husband and father-in-law were doing, she stepped into the next gallery. That's when she saw directly across from her the Sisters of the Braided Hair. They were having a hushed, serious conversation about something they were looking at on the African-American girl’s cellphone.

    Dena had been right—they were friends. Instinctively she moved away from them, and for several minutes, drifted unseeing through the second gallery wondering what they were discussing and knowing she’d never know.

    And then, suddenly, she snapped back to attention: at the gallery’s far end was the first field trip group, almost all of them. Just the kids. They were standing in clusters along the length of a painting nearly as wide as the wall on which it was hanging. Stretched almost diagonally across the vast width of it, a semi-naked, shining, bronze-toned Black man lay peacefully on a white veil that wrapped around him to cover his genitals the way Jesus’ often were on crucifixes. Both he and the veil seemed to be borne slightly aloft by the painting’s profusion of green and beige leaves flecked with small red blooms. The vegetation was too prominent and alive to be mere backdrop. The kids were looking silently—reverently, Dena thought. They’d remember this painting. 

 

III. The Genesis of "Sight Lines"

 

Scott at 30 Americans****

"Sight Lines" was inspired by a visit that my husband Scott, my father-in-law, and I made to the Tacoma Art Museum in January 2017. 

 

But "Sight Lines" is a short story, not a memoir; it didn't happen. 

 

That said, here's what is true:

 

• When I walked into the gallery at the museum, a mostly White student field trip group was just moving away from "Duck, Duck, Noose" at the direction of two adults. That's what got me wondering what the students' group experience with the piece had been.

 

• When I did run into that same student field group a second time in the second gallery, they really were mesmerized by Kehinde Wiley's "Sleep."

 

• "Long Jump of Carl Lewis" really was hanging on the wall behind "Duck, Duck, Noose," creating the noose-neck alignment that Dena notices in the story.

• As a former teacher, I'm always interested in student field trip groups whenever I come across them. That said, I do not stalk them.

• Yes, Dena bears some resemblance to me (!)--but she's not me.

 

• 30 Americans was a fantastic exhibit. 

 

• Recently, I've been reading more short stories and thinking a lot about what they can do that novels and other forms of literature may not be able to do so well. I've been especially grateful to Manuel Munoz for this, not just for his wonderful short stories--one of them appears in the just published The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story--but for the various interviews with him that I've listened to during the pandemic. Most recently, he, George Saunders, and Sandra Cisneros were interviewed by John Freeman about short stories and writing generally.

 

So if you made it this far through this blog post, I am so grateful to you! Thank you for rewarding my daring to have hunkered down at my computer keyboard to try to do something I hadn't done for a long time, and for my having had the nerve to post it here. And by all means, let me know what you think if you're inclined to do so.

* Photograph of "Duck, Duck, Noose" by Gary Simmons (by Chan T. Chao, Courtesy of the Corcoran Gallery) in Thompson, D. A. (2012). 30 Americans: Exhibition Review. African Arts. http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/45/3/87/1816179/afar_r_00014.pdf. 

** Photograph of "Sleep" by Kehinde Wiley (by Chan T. Chao, Courtesy of the Corcoran Gallery) in Thompson, D. A. (2012). 30 Americans: Exhibition Review. African Arts. http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/45/3/87/1816179/afar_r_00014.pdf.  

*** Photograph of "Long Jump by Carl Lewis" by Henry Taylor in Johnson, K. (2012, February 2). A Visual Equivalent of the Blues, in Warm Shades. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/arts/design/henry-taylors-portraits-and-other-paintings-at-moma-ps1.html. 

**** On the cover of Thirty Americans: Rubell Family Collection: Rashid Johnson's "The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club." Hobbs, R. C., Wallace, M., Ligon, G., & Sirmans, F. (2013). 30 Americans: Rubell Family Collection. Rubell Family Collection.