Drawing for "Guilty" ["Hey! What are you doing?"] 2004

Editor: Karl Stevens's comic-book style drawing, "Drawing for 'Guilty' ['Hey! What are you doing?']" presents a scene inside what seems to be a museum. The detailed hatching gives it a gritty, almost conspiratorial mood. What symbols or cultural anxieties do you see reflected in this piece? Curator: The use of the museum setting itself is telling. It represents a repository of cultural memory and aspiration. The tension between the guards, the visitor, and the architecture suggests a questioning of who has access to, and control over, cultural narratives. Does the artist perhaps imply we're all being watched, judged, and categorized? Editor: That makes me think about the labels and classifications of "high" and "low" culture and who gets to decide what's valuable. Thank you, I didn't notice that before.