Bob Grumman on “Drift”
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Marilyn R. Rosenberg’s “Drift”
Consider, first, how important the large-lettered words wobbling all over the place in it are, particularly “drifts,” “procrastination,” “puddling, babbling, whirling,” and, in just the right place, “lingers,” linging with the “ling” words headed toward it. Equally important are its graphics, which include a small school of fish and gorgeously splishy brushstrokes in various ocean colors. “DRIFTS,” as it is actually spelled, can easily and very appropriately be taken for “DREAMS.” Changes of colors along sharp edges turn the work into a throng of rectangles working geometric precision against the swirl of all else, to suggest blocks of time in motion, being lost . . . On the other hand, the procrastination is allowing for–well, the eventual dreams the whirl of the creative subconscious yields that I find to be one essential component of this composition. Final result: words and graphics working together in the reading center and the seeing center of the brain to slow an engagent into a Manywhere-at-Once at the heart of ocean depths and mysteries only dreams can reach.
Note, incidentally, the difference between what I said about Marilyn’s work before reading what she said about it, and her slant. Neither of us is wrong, nor will you be (necessarily) wrong to find things in the work neither she nor I found. An artwork is of value to the degree that it can plausibly suggest a great many things, so long as none of them significantly contradicts the best of them (and there is always a central best meaning to an artwork all sensible people agree on such as the fact that this one is about the ocean).
Bob Grumman