Drawing as Reading, Drawing as Writing

In this paper, I focus on the ongoing project A Partial History, for which I re-create marks of usage and time found in 19th and early 20th-century books from my late grandmother’s book collection. I “re-read” these books as material objects, paying attention to folds, creases, tears, stains, discolorations, and worm holes. I trace these marks by hand, one page at a time. These indexical drawings—which depend on human, animal, intentional, unintentional, and natural marks—are then scanned, printed, and bound to create alternative “history” books, documenting the history of use of each original book. Drawing forms part of the process of making—as tracing—as well as part of the outcome—books of drawings. Using this project as an example, I discuss how drawing enables a different form of “reading” and “writing” of the world and results in a different kind of “language,” that is, a different mode of experiencing the world and creating meaning. The textual narratives of the original books—the readable characters—are left behind and a different kind of narrative—one of time, use, embodiment, and distributed agency—is foregrounded in the “unreadable” line drawings. Drawing can, thus, enable an embodied mode of knowing, one that depends on handling objects and images, “touching” them, “feeling” their details, and preserving some while erasing others. Ultimately, I propose drawing as a mode of relating to the world that involves becoming attentive to what is already there, responding to it, and finding ways of working with it.