Dreaming of Nothing

Life-drawing sessions at AVA gallery usually begin with short poses lasting seconds to minutes. These quick poses serve as a warm up both for the model and the artist. Longer poses might extend for an hour or longer with intermittent breaks. On this particular day however, the model remained frozen in his long pose, unresponsive to the call for a break. He seemed to be in what I would call a “tonic seizure”; rather than uncontrolled contractions, he was in a static coma. We, the artists, hadn’t taken notice since all good models can hold their poses without flinching.

There was concern he might fall from his perch on a stool, atop the raised wooden platform, especially if he were startled on awakening. One of us called 9 – 1 – 1 while others scrambled to help the monitor ease him onto the floor where he eventually “came to”. It seems he’d run late, skipped breakfast, walked to the studio and then “dropped out”, presumably from inadequate blood sugar.

Nothing during the warm-up poses alerted us to what would soon happen. I’d already prepared an image which included four of the quick poses (see “Standing in Line”. However, my print of that day’s longer pose (“Dreaming of Nothing”) is understandably incomplete.  I did my best to rescue the image right then because I can’t work with it once the ink had dried.

Many find “Dreaming of Nothing” spooky. That’s exactly the way it seemed at the time: there were no overhead lights in the cavernous studio; a spotlight directly aimed toward the model was augmented with indirect, muted light from the curtained, North-facing windows. On this particular day, there was also a glow emanating from my light box.

I’ll explain in a future post how the figures drawn on my light box during life-drawing sessions become hand-pulled prints.