Christ Church, St. Louis 1919

Joseph Pennell made this drawing of Christ Church in St. Louis with what looks like graphite, and the way he’s layered the marks makes me think about artmaking as a way of finding form, not just copying it. The whole image is built from a cloud of tiny strokes, but notice how the tower is so much darker, denser, than the sky around it. Pennell really digs into the grain of the paper here. It’s almost like he’s building the church up out of the fog. If you look closely at the top of the tower, you can see the little gargoyles reaching out like they’re trying to grab the rain. Those details add this sense of playfulness, of something alive in the architecture. This reminds me a bit of Piranesi’s etchings of Rome, where the buildings seem to grow organically, blurring the line between structure and nature. Art’s like an ongoing conversation, isn’t it? It's about embracing the fact that things aren't fixed.