Diane Jones, 13
Perspective Drawing, School Work, 1974
Pencil on Paper
8” x 11” (20.32 cm x 27.94 cm)

The artist searched her father’s workshop for leftover chunks of wood, gluing them together to make the sculpture of odd shapes even odder. Glue dried, her seventh-grade homework project activates: lesson on multiple perspective drawing. Ruled lines pressed hard, then erased, indicate differing perspective points. The multiple patterns in the wood pieces seem to extract shapes of childhood monsters and memories. The large grain of the tabletop happens to be the same dated, brown, wood grain laminate table Diane’s grown family sits at: celebrating, encouraging, dining. Many a Bicycle Pinochle card has been thrown at this, her father’s workshop table, scoring winners and losers, generation after generation. Mr. Billo, her Art Teacher, noted at years end: I hope Diane seriously considers some type of art career. “I have tried my damnedest, Mr. Billo. Forty-seven years have passed, and I can resolutely say: my damndest.”

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Woodworker father.
Fabric crafty mother.
Middle school art instructor.
Life.
Teachers, all.