Shaker Grandmother Clock 1935 - 1942

Orville Cline drew this "Shaker Grandmother Clock" with graphite and colored pencil. Look at how the grain of the wood becomes a series of marks, almost like the clock has been built out of drawing. You can almost see him, Cline, bearing down to create the darks. It's interesting to see the materiality of the clock represented in pencil, to see texture transformed into line. The surface is matte. There's this tension between the clock as a three-dimensional object in space, and the flattening effect of the drawing; it reminds me of some of the work of contemporary artists like Wayne Thiebaud. There's a kind of tender directness to the rendering here, a folksy Americana quality that feels very genuine. It suggests that art is just a conversation between people, an exchange of ideas and ways of seeing the world.