Scribbled Heads
Heads in a few lines, then heads in a storm of them. This room begins in November 2022 with faces drawn in loose colored line on bright grounds, yellow, orange, magenta, green, and ends in March 2023 with the collection piece. Between them the winter heads arrive: dark, scribbled, with teeth bared.
The line heads are quick. A black loop for the skull, a few colored strokes for the features, the ground doing the rest. The scribbled heads are the opposite: hundreds of strokes piled on a dark face until only the eyes and the teeth show through.
The ground goes dark. It is yellow on November 16. By January it is black, and by February the faces have no ground at all, only scribble.
Heads in a Few Lines
November 16 and 17, 2022. Four heads in loose line on bright grounds, each drawn in under a day of the last.
Rawblocks #42
A head on yellow drawn in black line, with a red box around the face, one small eye at the left and one white ring at the right, and a grin of white teeth. Grey scribble fills the ground behind it, and a few blue lines run through the face. Sixty-two strokes. The head is a box inside a box, the way the masks were, but drawn in air: nothing is filled, and the yellow comes through everywhere.
Rawblocks #43
A head in profile on orange, drawn in black line with a blue X for an eye, a grin of white and black teeth, and an ear drawn as a spiral.
Rawblocks #44
A head on magenta in black and colored line, two ringed eyes, a crest of black scribble for hair, and a mouth of white teeth in a red box.
Rawblocks #45
A head in profile on green, drawn in a single pink and yellow line, with a red eye and a mouth of white teeth at the right.
The Scribble Arrives
November 22 and 23, 2022. Three heads where the scribble comes in: a purple head with yellow hair, an orange cat head, and a head lit by a beam.
Rawblocks #46
A purple head with a crest of yellow strokes for hair, two ringed eyes, and a wide grin of white teeth, in colored scribble on purple.
Rawblocks #47
A cat head on orange, drawn in thick black loops over teal and yellow paint, with two eyes, one a spiral and one a white ring, and a small grin. The ears are two black points. A black shadow spreads under the head like spilled ink. The scribble here is black and heavy, and it covers the face so that the features are found inside it. The dark heads begin here.
Rawblocks #48
A head on purple with spiky hair, two boxed eyes, and a yellow beam pouring from its mouth to the right, drawn in colored scribble over dark paint.
Winter Heads
January 18 to February 15, 2023. Eight dark heads in scribble, with teeth bared, and one yellow figure with bones.
Rawblocks #49
A dark head with two mouths of white teeth, one above the other, a red propeller for one eye and a yellow ring for the other, drawn in white, blue and red line over black. A black flower hangs at the upper right. The head is outlined in heavy white, and the two mouths fill the lower half. It is the first of the winter heads, drawn January 18, 2023, and the first with the teeth doubled.
Rawblocks #50
A dark head in yellow, blue and black scribble with a blue X over one eye, a box of teeth where the other should be, and a grin of yellow teeth below.
Rawblocks #53
A dark round head in scribble with one eye a red ring and the other a red oval, a grin of white teeth, and a white line running down the brow.
Rawblocks #54
A tall dark head on brown, two hollow eyes with spiky lids, each with a small ring inside, a long dark nose, and a wide mouth of white teeth in red. The head is drawn in grey and brown scribble with a heavy black edge. Two months after the head on yellow in sixty-two strokes, this is the same head drawn in darkness: a box of a face, two eyes, a grin, with the ground gone black.
Compare with #42, in this room
Rawblocks #55
A dark head in scribble with a ringed eye and a spiral eye, a mouth open on white teeth and a red tongue, on a ground of colored bars.
Rawblocks #56
A dark cat head in purple, blue and black scribble, two round eyes, a grille of white teeth below.
Rawblocks #57
A yellow figure in a frame with white bones sticking out of its head and shoulders, one arm raised, drawn in yellow and black line over a grey square.
Rawblocks #58
A dense mask with two green hearts above the eyes, a ringed eye and a crossed eye, a grille of white teeth, on brown.
Rawblocks #59
A blue mask on a blue body, a crossed ringed eye, a long bar of white and black teeth.
March 14 and 15
The last night. Four works between March 14 and 15, 2023, and then the collection piece, drawn last.
Rawblocks #60
Three figures in a frame, a skull, a white skeleton and a pink robot, drawn in colored line over a crowded ground, with a small black figure at the lower right.
Rawblocks #61
A mask with a bird's head for one eye, its beak open on white teeth, a red ringed eye beside it, and a beam of red crossing from the upper right, on blue.
Rawblocks #62
A figure with a sun for a head runs across red, in a blue shirt, one arm raised, drawn in red and white line over soft teal discs.
Rawblocks #63
A round mask split in two, half yellow and half brown, with a ringed eye on each side, a red target for a mouth, in a frame of grey, drawn March 15, 2023.
Rawblocks #0000
The collection piece, an edition of one, drawn last on March 15, 2023. A crowd of figures from the series in one square: a black crow at the top, a skull head on a striped body, a yellow sun-face with a grin, a black cat with X eyes, a blue skull in a ring, a small masked head. Every mark of the series is here, the beams, the X, the crown, the teeth. Where the first work of May 2022 packed a single mask to the frame, this one packs the whole series.
Closing
Look again at the head on yellow from November, sixty-two strokes of black line with the ground showing through, and then at the collection piece, where the square is full. The room went from one line to a crowd in four months.