Bandbox c. 1939

Joseph Rothenberg made this watercolor of a bandbox sometime between 1870 and 1920, and it’s all about the details, right? The way those blues and golds play off each other in a dance of pattern and repetition, it's like he's turning a simple object into a little universe. Look closely at how the patterns meet, that scalloped edge between the lid and the base. There's this tension between control and looseness that I find so compelling. You can almost feel the hand of the artist, carefully building up these layers of color and form. He’s not just representing a box, he's giving us a sense of its texture, its history, its place in someone's life. It reminds me of some of those early American folk artists, who took everyday objects and turned them into something extraordinary. Maybe like the work of Edward Hicks? Both artists are finding beauty in the mundane, elevating the everyday to the level of art. And isn't that what art is all about? It's not just about what you see, it's about how you see it.