Okay, this is from the 2003 Leather Sketchbook, and that seems about right to me. Um, the drawing on the left page is a goofy little stick figure holding up a lover on a pedestal, which I recognize as being inspired by a little clay sculpture that I made. We used to take a research boat out into the ocean and pull up samples and things. The Vantuna was the name of that boat, previously owned by, I believe, the president, or CEO, or some leader of the, um, Van de Kamp, canned goods, and Van de Kamp tuna, I don’t know what Van de Kamp made. But this was his yacht, which had been turned into a research vessel.
Note: Follow this link for more (and more accurate) info on the Vantuna – I was mostly right, but apparently the spelling is Van Camp – and they were the ones who sold “Chicken of the Sea” with the memorable television ads from when I was a kid.
And we had access to it. If we raised, if we got a group together to raise up enough money to take it out, we would do that fairly often back then – with the Venice Oceanarium. And on one of those outings, we pulled up some really fine sediments – some clay from the ocean bottom – and I sculpted a few pieces, and… this is a drawing of one of those pieces that I then mounted on a base, and had a wire that, you know, suspended it up above that base.
So, what I’ve done here is I’ve drawn a sculpture, and then written next to it – this idea of putting a lover up on a pedestal. The, um, the little, um, I’m guessing that that drawing might be a sculpture too. That might be a wire sculpture that I had next to it. The whole thing might have been, yeah, actually drawn from a little setup that I had, because I can think of no other explanation for why I would have drawn that wiry stick figure like that, except that maybe I’d put some wire together and made it look like that. That must be what that is.
On the right hand side, is a drawing of, yeah, just awkward lovers, you know, just, uh, yeah, particularly the autobiographical character there. Clumsily trying to, you know, awkwardly make love, which, I think, was sort of a self deprecating, but true, circumstance that I was depicting.
And then I’ve written, Is this so difficult? and How do I remember? And of course, it was difficult, I guess, that was the problem. But that was 2003, 23 years ago.
This is a nice couple pages of drawings. Apparently done on September 26, 2003. I love these sketchbook drawings that have dates on them, so that I know exactly when they happened. At this point, I would have been living in the apartment on Altair, probably drawing in this sketchbook on the futon, which is, um, where I did a lot of drawing back then. That’s it.
Postscript: I hunted around a little in an old hard drive and found a couple of related images – a not so great photo of the little sculpture and a digital print based on the not so great photo. So here they are.
