Jewel Box 1935 - 1942

Eleanor Gausser made this drawing of a ‘Jewel Box’ with watercolor on paper. It's an illusion, an image conjured up from almost nothing, and that’s what's so great about it. Look closely, and you can see how the artist allows the grain of the wood to come forward through the wash, and that brings a certain kind of warmth. There’s a kind of push-pull happening too, between the decorative elements and the underlying structure. The little curlicues and the abstracted insect on top – they're playful, almost goofy. But then the hard edges of the box itself bring us back to order. Gausser reminds me a little of someone like Forrest Bess, who also had this knack for combining the mystical and the mundane. Both artists seem to be saying, “Hey, art doesn’t have to be one thing or another, it can be both. It can be weird, and it can be simple. It can be anything.”