Day 9. Getting from here to there
Every day is a winding road. Or a loopy one? Or dotted!
My GUTsters! Day nine and feeling fine.
So proud of you for getting goofy yesterday. Of us. We are on a real journey, start to finish. We’ll each draw our own way to our 30-day destination — but we’re doing it together.
Speaking of traveling from one point to another, today’s playful drawing takes inspiration from another of my all-time favorite artists, Saul Steinberg, and his simple and brilliant series of “A to B” drawings. Or, as he calls them, biographies.
We love you Saul!
You may recognize Saul’s work from his many New Yorker covers (View of the World from 9th Avenue is a classic) or his singular style of drawings, paintings, prints, collages, and sculptures — always playful, always engaged, always looking closely at the world with a keen eye and wry sense of humor.
On Saul’s drawing via the Steinberg Foundation:
Saul Steinberg defined drawing as “a way of reasoning on paper,” and he remained committed to the act of drawing. Throughout his long career, he used drawing to think about the semantics of art, reconfiguring stylistic signs into a new language suited to the fabricated temper of modern life.
Saul called himself a “writer who draws.” He refused to cram his broad interests and career into any one category. He said, “I don’t quite belong to the art, cartoon or magazine world, so the art world doesn’t quite know where to place me.” While it kept him mostly out of the high art world he so revered, his constant exploration and evolution did allow him to continue playing and pushing boundaries. He refused to be put in a box. Saul did Saul.
May we all be so bold in our work and in our lives.1
One of my favorite drawings of Saul’s is a series of little doodles from his gorgeous collection of drawings, The Labyrinth (gifted to me by GUT crew member Kyle Ranson-Walsh!). The drawing at the top of this post is the penultimate page in the book, and the final one contains a bunch of small, interconnected drawings all on the same theme: getting from point A to point B.
I could not love these more. I think they are a perfect metaphor for drawing, and life. We are so often focused on a destination that we don’t consider the infinite journeys we can take to get there — all the different shapes and feelings and time and distance. The starting point and ending point remain the same; it is the journey that is interesting. It creates the relationship between the two. And the more unique and unexpected the better.
And with that, today we are going to take Saul’s lead and draw our own journeys.
