House on 13th Street c. 1942

Lucille Jeffries made this lithograph, "House on 13th Street," with stone, sometime during her short life. I can almost feel Jeffries standing before this house, squinting, making a thousand tiny decisions about what to include and how to arrange it all. The composition—that looming sky, the house smack dab in the middle—it's all so deliberate. What’s it like, I wonder, to choose this house? What does it mean to immortalize it in this way? It's all in the details with lithography, isn't it? Every little line, every shadow, it's all been painstakingly etched. I notice the way she renders the sky with these swirling marks, almost as if she is using charcoal. You can see how the house emerges like a complex geometric puzzle. The shadows make the house feel like a stage set. It reminds me of Edward Hopper, how he found the drama in everyday architecture. Making art is like being in a constant conversation with those who came before.