Interior with Stove 1932

Charles Sheeler made this 'Interior with Stove' with pencil on paper. Look how he’s zeroed in on the light and shadow playing around a New England home's stove. Sheeler's got a way of flattening things out, making the simple shapes feel monumental. It's like he's saying, "Hey, look at this ordinary thing, but really *look* at it." What grabs me is the stovepipe, a solid vertical line. It’s placed so that its chimney lines up with one of the window panes behind, which adds to the graphic quality. He's pulling something from the real world and turning it into a pattern. It's like those old Shaker designs, functional but with a quiet beauty. Sheeler reminds me of someone like Agnes Martin. Both simplify things down to their bare bones, finding the abstract in the everyday. Art isn't about fancy stuff; it's about how you see and how you make others see too.