"DAY BY DAY:" Drawings from the Journals of Mowry Baden, 1958 - 2007
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"Drawing on paper"
Mowry Baden, "drawing on paper," 1968.
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"Drawing on paper"
Mowry Baden, "drawing on paper," 1976.
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"Drawing on paper"
Mowry Baden, "drawing on paper," 1983.
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"Drawing on paper"
Mowry Baden, "drawing on paper," 1992.
DAY BY DAY: Drawings from the Journals of Mowry Baden, 1958 - 2007
By Brian Grison
Day by Day is an exhibition of 77 drawings gleaned from 39 years of journals kept by sculptor Mowry Baden. Most of the drawings do not in fact resemble typical journal entries, because by 1980 Baden had developed the habit of either drawing on other sheets of paper and tipping them into the books or filling a whole page with one or more drawings, and using other pages for writing. In other words, he developed the strategy of segregating the drawings from his more personal thoughts. This evolution of the relationship between journal writing and sketching ideas for sculptures becomes apparent when certain early drawings in the exhibition are studied. The drawing dated July 24, 1962 is on the lined pages of a small notebook in which he began writing when he was a 22-year-old undergraduate student at Pomona College in Claremont, California, in 1958. To quote the text occupying the top third of the page:
(...) of Marseilles Harbour. Late afternoon, raking light. In bed — upper bunk. The porthole a black circle. Soft patches of white foam break past / across the circle. A pale mold, spreading, fading.
This commentary displays a writer's notational style perhaps as much as an artist's sensitivity to visual information. The drawing below the text, though not circular, might be a view of the shore observed through the porthole. Or it could relate to text on another page. It is significant that Mowry Baden was encouraged to begin journal-writing by fellow university students who were writers. His early journals consisted mostly of writing about paintings and sculptures he was working on. Now, 40 years later, the ratio of drawings to text has reversed.
On the other hand, the drawing dated May 7, 2000 carries a rare return to the journalistic style of the earlier books. On the upper-right of two sketches for sculptures appears a list of references to films by David Rimmer: Workshop All; Poland; Emily Carr; Divine Mannequins; Boogie Woogie; Cellophane Wrapper; Local Knowledge. This list-making practice suggests that Baden continues to employ text as a tool of free-association in pursuit of sculptural ideas — or it might simply be a list of films by David Rimmer.
Since about 1980, it’s surprising how infrequently drawings and writing occupy the same page. Perhaps an explanation can be found in both Baden's drawing technique and his strategy for storing drawings. Before about 1980 he used whatever drawing instrument was at hand. Since then he has employed Pigma Pens almost exclusively, and since the early 1980s he’s also written and drawn on only one side of his journal pages.
Perhaps the most significant difference between Baden’s writing and drawing is in his drawing technique. He likes to draw with both hands simultaneously in order, as he puts it, to "let the world leak in." Drawing with both hands allows both an optical and whole body/mind experience into his thinking. This, in fact, emulates his concern for technologies-as-sculptures that extend human consciousness.
This manner of developing ideas might also be a rejection of the limited linear left-to-right mechanics of handwriting — while his handwriting is sweeping, unlike his drawing, it is still haunted by the need to be readable.
Not so the drawings. Some, like July 28, 1983, are simple cartoon-like diagrams of a proposed project that melds a common shopping cart and some kind of expanding bag above it, a theme of ad hoc joinery that appears regularly in Baden's constructions. Other drawings stand simply for themselves. These comprise about one-third of the exhibition, independent drawings with vague references to landscapes, the figure, portraiture or a kind of minimalist abstraction made up of something like shorthand scribbling.
Mowry Baden and Deborah de Boer, director/curator of Victoria’s Deluge Contemporary Art, selected the drawings, Each drawing was removed from the books and a photocopy put in its place. Baden then dated and signed each drawing on the back. The result is a show of work, much of it that the artist himself hadn’t studied in years.