Andiron (one of pair) c. 1938

Jack Staloff made this drawing of an andiron sometime in the 20th century using graphite on paper. I’m looking at the tonality of the gray and thinking about how Staloff was probably looking at the cast iron of the original object. It looks like he was studying the weight of it. I imagine Staloff thinking about every little line that makes up the whole, and maybe trying to translate the texture of the metal onto paper. You know, when you look at something like that, you start to think about other drawings. Staloff may have been influenced by architectural drawings and blueprint art, which can take mechanical objects and abstract them with line. It's so interesting how art becomes this ongoing conversation between different artists and different ways of seeing. I think there is an inherent abstraction when you take a 3-D object and render it on a 2-D plane.