“Yellow Chair…” Scott Prior. My first assignment in Stanley Tasker’s freshman drawing class was to visually describe to an alien from another planet how to make a shoe. I failed miserably. My brain wanted to know why in the hell ET might need to make a human shoe? It was ridiculous. I wanted to make art, not diagrams. I lacked imagination and turned in miserable diagrams. But the results from my fellow students were instructive. One illustrated the process of carving a Dutch wooden shoe from a log, and her work was beautifully drawn, with depth and texture.
I think Professor Tasker’s intent was to call our attention to the beauty, structure and meaning found in “ordinary” things. Dirty boots, coffee cups, wedding dresses, raincoats, hats, guitars. Or an empty seat, a globe on a window sill, a potted plant, a sunlit room. All of these mere everyday objects, but they belong to someone. They represent a human life, a personal presence, or the memory of someone. Someone we know. Someone we miss. Someone we love.
Visit Scott at scottpriorart.com