Fixing to Draw

sigh.
Soon.
But no time now - it's grant season for everyone and the Conservation Society i work for is no exception.
For now: plans + lists + looking back on the oldies. I made this one in April 2006. It is based on a Shaker Gift Drawing made by Hannah Calhoun in 1842. "Drawing" is a misnomer because the Shakers didn't use it to describe what they were making. They referred to them as presents, hearts, tokens of love, rolls, scrolls, sheets, signs, notices. Often they prefaced these terms with the adjective "sacred".

"This definition focuses on the function of the works as gifts from heavenly spirits, rather than on the form in which the gifts were materialized. In fact, the gift drawings often include titles, captions, inscriptions, and extended texts, in English as well as in scripts written in indecipherable tongues, that place them on an uninterrupted continuum with other manifestations of belief, such as inspired writing, ecstatic movement, and spontaneous speech, especially in the form of song." (France Morin, Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs, The Drawing Center, New York, and UCLA Hammer Museum, 2001)

Edward Demming Andrews called the Shaker Gift Drawings "[spiritual] messages in pictorial form," (The Gift To Be Simple, 1940). They were manifestations of visions received by one Sister or Brother (though usually a Sister) and passed to another who would compose a visual image in pencil, paint and ink based on the telling of that vision. They were made between 1837 and 1850, "The Era of Manifestations".
(The same is true of the "gift songs" and other verbal works. The invention of forms in both the songs and drawings is amazing, as is their resemblance to the practice of later poets and artists.)