Under the Shed 1917

Joseph Pennell made this print, Under the Shed, using lithographic crayon and ink. It’s all about process, the way the marks build up, layer on layer. I'm drawn to the raw, immediate feel. It's like watching the city grow right before your eyes. The texture here is everything, that dense, almost chaotic network of lines. Look closely, you can almost feel the grit and grime. See how the lines are darker in some areas, lighter in others? It’s like he’s carving out space, light struggling to break through the industrial haze. There's this one spot, right in the foreground, where the lines just explode outwards. It's like a visual representation of the energy, the sheer force of human labor that went into building this. Pennell reminds me of Piranesi, that knack for turning architecture into something monumental, even a little bit menacing. Art isn't about answers, it's about the questions we ask along the way.