Untitled (Smelting) 1935 - 1938

Minnetta Good made this image ‘Untitled (Smelting)’ with graphite on paper. I find myself wondering what was it like to be her, drawing in a pre-feminist world, recording the everyday labor that was all around her. The surface is so delicately and meticulously covered with tiny marks that it could almost be a photograph. What was it like to use a soft pencil, over and over, slowly coaxing this scene out of the white page, the air shimmering with heat? I can imagine her smudging the graphite with her fingers, like charcoal, to give a sense of atmosphere. The tones, shades of gray, give the whole scene an eerie, ghostly quality, as if the scene is already a memory, something disappearing before our eyes. It’s like the memory of an industrial song. I am so thankful for Good, her work, and for the vision she left for us. Her image is a testament to the fact that art, whatever its form, is about exchange and cross-pollination across time.