Carole Seborovski: Ink Dot and Enameled Line Drawing, 1988

In this 1988 mixed-media work, Carole Seborovski investigates material and process. Playing with various registers of the ground, with surface, and with contrasts in form, she reveals the relative densities of ink and paint, and the textures of paper and collage.

Seborovski has chosen a ready-made ground for her experiments: a vertically oriented sheet of ledger-style paper the color of newsprint, printed with kelly green lines. In each square of ledger space, Seborovski has dabbed a dot of black ink, forming columns that alternate with unmarked space. The middle column is nearly empty except for two sets of widely spaced vertical brackets, which provide a visual focus. The dots are applied imprecisely, their liquidity expressed through the bleeding of their edges to the limits of each square or, in many instances, beyond them. The dots blur into each other, forming a chain of varying width.

Superimposed on this field is a frame composed of four paper strips that stand in relief to the flatness of the drawing surface. Their thickness is reinforced by their clear delineation against the diffusion of dots and by a layer of glossy black enamel, which also makes their surface slightly reflective. The thickness of the paint and the direction of the brushwork are visible.

The overall effect Seborovski achieves is a multilayered composition of grids and other organizational elements: columns of diffused dots, regulated green squares, black collage frame. The dots are absorbed into the grain of the paper, and the green-printed ledger seems to rise to the surface of the ground, as its lines remain visible over the seepage of black ink. The black line of the frame, with its enamel paint, seems in turn to project slightly off the ground.

Citation:
Text by Pamela M. Lee, from "Drawing is another kind of language": Recent American Drawings from a New York Private Collection (Harvard University Art Museums, in association with Daco-Verlag Gunter Bläse, 1997; reprinted 1998). ©1997 President and Fellows of Harvard College.