WALL, PAPER (WORDS & PICTURES VOLUME TWO)

From the book's introduction: WALL, PAPER (WORDS & PICTURES VOLUME TWO) collects over a dozen unconventional sketchbooks, in their entirety. By “unconventional” I mean collections of drawings that in one way or another transcend the gravitational pull of bound books and aim themselves at the gallery wall (or the walls of my studio as I make them, as it were). The Japanese album – or scroll, or accordion sketchbook – has been of particular interest, nodding towards Asian traditions in the art of storytelling where images and text inhabit the same surface. For a number of years by now I’ve also been in the habit of neatly trimming the pages from a brand new hardcover sketchbook before I begin, effectively creating a folio of loose pages. Or blocks of cold-pressed watercolor paper – ready for the wall straight from the manufacturer – that I still somehow can’t treat as anything other than a finite/infinite series of pages, beginning to end with no end, Amen. Marks on pages, hung from walls. (Jt, Jersey City, April 4th 2023)