"La Trinité," Vendôme 1952

John Taylor Arms made this etching, "La Trinité, Vendôme", and it's like looking at a building made of the finest lace, a kind of drawing that almost feels like sculpture. The dark ground makes the architectural details pop, each line crisp and deliberate. It’s amazing how he’s built this whole cathedral with just lines! I bet it was a process of layering, a back and forth between the plate and the image he held in his head. The closer you look, the more you see these tiny, tiny marks, like a whole universe packed into a small space. It makes me think of Dürer, who also had this knack for detail. But where Dürer could get all caught up in the world, Arms seems to find something spiritual in architecture itself. It's like he’s saying that the way we build things can be a kind of prayer.