Introducing Lee Walton. At last, baseball season is finally here and I can share these drawings! Lee's an artist for all you sports fans out there.
Lee Walton, a self-described “experientialist” makes art that records and explores all manner of his day-to-day interests and experiences – one such interest being baseball, which is the subject of these drawings (What, you couldn’t tell?).
He makes these like a human seismograph, applying a pre-determined drawing system to represent the events of the game as they unfold before his eyes. Using ink and charcoal on single sheets of paper (often baseball-card-sized) he records each inning (or sometimes the accumulated actions of individual players) and then assembles the cards to represent a game, a world series, etc.
According to his pre-constructed system (Walton usually writes the key on the drawing), the color, quality and location of each mark is determined by the events that transpire during the game. For instance, curved lines can stand for base hits, a double is often a wide stripe running top to bottom, areas of wash are usually a strike out, a homerun is a thick line across the top.
He also records other kinds of chance events… such as the movements of pedestrians and cars. I especially love the one below which records the intensity and duration of 18 horn honks heard by the artist on Rivington Street one day in May 2003.
If you are interested in any of the drawings, please contact Kraushaar Galleries Inc., at 212-307-5730.
The artist’s website is not to be missed. He’s got lots of his video work available. Two favorites of mine are: Walton vs. Shaq - 2005 Season depicting a one episode of his season-long free throw competition with Shaquille O'Neal, and Get Over It, his climbing adventures along the streets of New York (and maybe San Francisco?). This one really left me in giggles.
Amazing work Lee.
Enjoy.
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
I love it.
LOVE it, but sadly the link to the gallery isn't responding - looks like you have to contact the artist directly, at least for the moment.
I'd buy one of his prints if he were a Mets fan instead of a Yankee fan...
Ridiculous!
Beautiful artwork, but calling it baseball or horns detracts from it.
Let it stand by itself - for example, I am a HUGE Red Sox fan, and the ACLS Sox vs. Yankees does not symbolize at all the agony and ecstacy of going from 3 games down to winning!
Yet, if you didn't know the name of it (or didn't care about baseball) it is an aesthetically pleasing piece of art!
sassy--
I don't know why the connection to baseball makes these less interesting to you.
I think the process is fascinating, and makes these pieces even better.
I love that he is so open about his process that yields these fascinating, textural works. Yes, they stand on their own, but sometimes art *is* about the process... and it is rare that such "process-driven" pieces yield such pleasing results.