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CARBON BASED 127 Graphite Drawings Michael Blaha NCENT MIN DE CO RS RIC RE

DRAWING BY THE UNKNOWN MENTOR IN 1982 I happened to sit beside a distinguished older gent at the dining counter inside Chicago s Congress Plaza Hotel I noticed he was drawing on 4 X 7 inch card stock using compressed graphite sticks and upon completion was giving the drawings to the delighted waitresses working behind the counter After a couple of minutes watching I just turned to him and asked So are you a good artist or what The directness of my question made him pause but then he said that he saw a certain intelligence in me and proceeded to demonstrate his technique using the sharp edge of the graphite to make arbitrary swathes and then improvised upon them to complete the drawing The outcome was an image of a man with a book which he gave me He claimed to not know what he would initially draw but the result came from intuitively improvising upon his initial random marks He said If your art teacher paints the best lemons in the world then you will learn to paint good lemons implying that in contrast a drawing that begins unplanned can evoke imaginative and creative possibilities while exercising one s ability to see After expressing my sincere gratitude for his insights and in a state of exaltation I departed to an upstairs conference room to attend a consciousness seminar I had originally come to the hotel for Forty odd years later the contents of the seminar have faded from my memory while the art lesson remains poignantly in my mind like a scene from an Edward Hopper painting Most of the drawings in this book began like the one he gave me at the dining counter with random marks that evolved into recognizable images His influence was undeniable Thank you sir whoever you are

Book design by John Balkwill in collaboration with Ilene Segalove Printed on archival quality paper in an edition limited to 100 copies Michael Blaha is an artist living in California CO RS RIC RE NCENT MIN DE PRODUCED IN AN EDITION LIMITED TO 100 COPIES THIS IS COPY NO MICHAEL BLAHA

is art rehearsal for the nirvanic cream dream scumbling like the moth in water flailing concentric reminders of a brutal cleaner past