Big Tree, Little Branches

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At Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston: Sandra Allen, Ballast, 2009, graphite on paper (15 separate sheets), total of 133.5 x 222.5 inches. That's about 12 x 19 feet

In Boston recently, I stopped into Carroll and Sons Gallery in the South End to see Sandra Allen's marvelous arboreal drawings. The one I loved most was the imposingly large-scale Ballast, installed on the wall facing the gallery entrance. Photographic from a distance, it is a mass of pencil marks from up close--a graphic rewriting of the old saw about not seeing the forest for the, well, you know.

That shift in scale reminded me that in May I'd photographed the maquette of Roxy Paine's Maelstrom at the James Cohan Gallery, just before the actual gargantuan sculpture was installed on the roof of the Met. I'll show you the big work via multiple pictures in the next post, but here you can take in the whole thing in two views.

At James Cohan Gallery in May: Roxy Paine's maquette of Maelstrom

Above: view from the south end (as it is installed on the Met roof)

Below: view from the north

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