While working on this latest mask drawing I realized that I was inspired once again by a UFO drawing that I stumbled upon years ago and wrote about on this blog. I am so seduced by the tiny intersecting spot that is created when a round form rests on a flat surface.
As I continue to work on the drawings for this series, I get more and more excited to begin the sculptural realm of the project.
The Silencer, ink and colored pencil, 15" x 18", 2013
UFO drawing by Joseph 2004
When I was living in New York City and commuting up to Columbia University from Greenpoint, Brooklyn for graduate school, there were lots of times the subway ride nearly did me in. There were only so many National Geos and only one Moby Dick. There's a point when transferring from the L train to the 1,2,3,9 trains requires a long walk through a bleak tunnel. If I was having a hard time, this portion of my journey struck me as particularly trying. However, one day in the future I enjoyed the commute when I discovered an older street artist selling crayon drawings of UFOs that had landed in the city. I bought one for 20 bucks, and for a long time, this was my favorite drawing of a UFO. It's the image of a yellow UFO sucking up a white dog-aardvark with it's orange beam in front of an abstract brown landscape.
But I discovered an image not so long ago that offers me something more. In this black and white picture there is a UFO sitting atop a perfect circle which is labeled with an arrow as a "decoy white ball, clear edges, not fuzzy." It's about geometry, balance, and what I love most about the illustration is the way it blurs the boundary between two dimensional and three dimensional space. To me there is the potential to have a real spaceship atop a flat circle, and this somehow blows my mind.
Saucer: One of my favorite examples of where two points meet
The juncture where the ball meets the base of the UFO perfectly depicts a space I have recently become obsessed with -- the single point where two lines touch. I'll keep bringing this up as more posts arise. There is something about this meeting point that I love, the balance, the potential energy, the tenderness.