Big Seed Drawing

Today was my third time cruising through the Compass in Hand exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. My approach is just to walk around until something catches my eye. It's great to have a membership to the museum and live so close because I don't feel any pressure to see everything and I can go back any time I want. I see something different that I like every time I check out this exhibition which runs until early next year. It's a good thing because there's plenty of time for me to go back several more times and find lots more art to like.

The work on display is from the Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection, and was acquired by the Museum in 2005. It is an extraordinary collection of over 2,500 contemporary works on paper though only 250 or so are on display which kind of sucks because I am sure there are so many more great pieces that will never been seen. I guess that's what the catalog is for. If I had a couple million dollars I'd love to acquire a huge collection of art, but I don't so I'll just have to pretend. I do have a couple of excellent pieces of art by Ian Burns and Fred Tomaselli in my small art collection. I just looked and found that Tomaselli piece has increased in value almost 20 times. I need to buy more art.

Anyway, at the MOMA today I decided to pick out one work and it's one that has been catching my eye on every visit. It's called "Big Seed Drawing" and is by an artist I really like, Mark Grotjahn. He made this one with ballpoint pen, color pencil and linseed oil on marked paper. It's fairly large at 29 x 23" (73.7 x 58.4 cm). Grothjahn usually works with colored pencils and makes work that's geometric and fairly formal in composition. This ones a bit looser than other pieces I've seen, but I like the messy surface and personal touch to his work. The colors remind me of some of Frank Stella's colorful work from the 1960's.