Clock c. 1938

Nicholas Gorid made this clock drawing, and the absence of a date feels really significant, right? It's a clock, something that measures time, and yet time, at least in the conventional sense, doesn't seem to matter here. There's this intense focus on line, every detail so meticulously rendered. I'm drawn to the way the script is used, how the letters are both functional and decorative. It’s like the entire clock face becomes a kind of abstract composition. The contrast between the precision of the clock's mechanics and the slightly wonky, hand-drawn quality of the script gives the piece its particular flavor. It reminds me a bit of the drawings of Martin Ramirez, that beautiful obsessive quality, the way simple forms become something else. Art is such an ongoing conversation, isn't it? We borrow, we steal, we transform. And in the end, it’s the ambiguity, the open-endedness that makes a work of art truly sing.