Ink on paper, size unknown
June 1958, Wheeling WVA
I did this ball-point pen drawing of my parents' house in Elm Grove (a neighborhood in the city of Wheeling, WV) shortly after I moved back there for the Summer after my second year of graduate school in Cleveland. Although the house was certainly undistinguished, its shabbiness is exaggerated by the drawing style, which I was experimenting with in imitation of Ben Shan, who's work I much admired at the time. This produced some interesting results, but it was too easy to create effects that were not entirely honest (as in this case) and I soon abandoned it. As for the house, it was demolished six or seven years later in the construction of Interstate 70, and the entire neighborhood is now buried under a 20-foot retaining wall for the highway.
(Ed. Note - In the late 1970s, David moved with his wife and children to Syracuse, NY, where he had accepted a faculty position with Syracuse University's Office of Publications. David's office was only steps from one of Ben Shahn's best known murals,"The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti" [1967]. The 60 x 12' mosaic tile mural adorns the Eastern edge of the otherwise unimpressive H. B. Crouse Hall, where its message and beauty go ignored by thousands of students every year. For a fascinating and very comprehensive history of the mural - and of Sacco & Vanzetti themselves - click here)
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