Well, this is one of the Red Pen Preservations. And the thing about these is, I like putting things in jars. And so at some point, I, um, started doing that, started putting drawings in jars, started putting other things in jars.
The origins of this piece kind of go back to this series of drawings I did, that were drawings on toilet paper, tubes. You know, the center part of a roll of toilet paper. And I discovered that those fit perfectly into these little Nescafe, instant coffee jars that I liked a lot. And so I did some of those, and they’re in boxes somewhere in a closet. And they were a bit challenging because drawing on the rounded surface of the toilet paper core was difficult. I don’t know. But I enjoyed doing them. And I’ve got some of them up on the website and a different gallery, I think, just some things I like in jars, you know – various things I put in jars because I do like putting things in jars.
This is a group of drawings I did with a red pen, and I like drawings with red pen. I’ll probably mention that at other times. Since I’ve already started talking about the toilet paper roles on this drawing that doesn’t have anything to do with toilet paper roles. I’ll save the red pen drawings for some other time. But these drawings were just drawn on regular paper. They were drawn specifically to go into the jars, I measured them, and made them so they would fit into the jars. Not exactly, not precisely, but well enough. and just did some drawings, put them in the jars, and I liked them. I liked the way the red pan goes with the red lid of the jar. I like the whole jar. I like the way that putting a two dimensional drawing into a jar makes it a three dimensional artwork, which I think is interesting.
I like the concept of preservation, you know, the idea that you can preserve this thing by putting it into a jar, which, of course, you know, is arguable, but the idea of making preserves is that you jar them. You know, if you’re, like, making strawberry preserves or apricot preserves or peach preserves, you know, you’re preserving it by putting it into the jar. So that’s kind of the idea. It touches on that idea of timeliness and ephemerality that I’ve enjoyed playing around with at times and continue to do.
And I guess that’s it. That’s all I’m going to say about this Red Pen Preservation drawing. This is number 14. I guess, layer 14, that’s probably number 14 from the group. Again, I really probably should have named these files a little bit more, um… tellingly.