Study: Proscenium Ornament 1909

graphite on Fabriano paper

A3 11.75in x 16.5in

2022

This drawing is part of a series exploring the beauty, but also the darker histories that lie beneath European ideals of beauty embedded in colonial architecture of the United States. In construction and ethos, colonial and colonial revival architecture perpetuates the dominant narrative of the history of the US.

For me, drawing these architectural details in graphite is a sort of re-remembering and reworking these harmful narratives, and rewriting the narrative to be more relevant to us today.

This artwork is from a series within this series—drawings made from ornamental pattern books from the turn of the century. This one was made from a digitized version of the Architectural Decorating Company’s 1909 catalogue.