Home Work

August 14, 2015 – Home Work

A temporary halt in travel has allowed me to get a lot of work done at home.  One of the most ambitious projects is producing an annotated photo inventory of Elliott’s artistic output, at least those paintings currently stored in our house.  (There are several works in private and museum collections that won’t be included.)  Over the years, we’ve shipped dozens of his paintings back and forth across the Atlantic.  They’ve been wrapped in heavy brown paper, wrapped in thick plastic sheeting, unwrapped, and re-wrapped on several occasions.  Since we can’t display all of them in our home, the majority of the canvases have remained in storage, under conditions that range from ideal, i.e. temperature-controlled facilities, to the decidedly less than ideal.  In fact, we found that moisture had irreparably damaged a number of paintings a few years ago, and Elliott chose to destroy them.  It was a sad, sad day when he sliced the canvas off the stretchers.  

While I expected it to be a time consuming project, I didn’t realize how physically demanding it would be.  Most of the paintings are quite large and the wooden stretchers, which Elliott built himself, are extremely heavy.  It takes two people to handle the labor.  Marshall and I have to haul the paintings from various locations around the house to my studio, where we unwrap, measure, set up for photos, record information for our spreadsheet, discard old paper wrappings, rewrap in plastic, label and finally move them to a new downstairs storage location.  Marshall is in charge of photography and photo editing and I’m in charge of updating the spreadsheet. 

Of course, even though Elliott can’t participate in the physical activities, he is very involved in this project.  Seated in his chair, Elliott provides Marshall and me with vigilant supervision and vocal direction, except when he dozes off.  I anticipate completing the inventory within the coming week.  However, this is just phase one of a much more comprehensive project, i.e. finding homes for all of his art.  Elliott has already contacted people in the arts world who may be interested in donations of his work, most of which was done from the late 1960s through the late 1970s. 

It was quite an experience seeing the paintings again after they’d been hidden from view for decades, and I’m hopeful that others will have an opportunity to enjoy them soon.  

Elliott explains the mathematical naming scheme for his paintings.  This is Two 28, one of his smaller works.