Waffle Iron c. 1939

Isabelle De Strange made this "Waffle Iron" with what looks like watercolor and ink. The brown palette is muted and the drawing style gives a clinical, matter-of-fact, and perhaps slightly alienated feel. I imagine Isabelle trying to capture every little detail of this waffle iron, with its grid pattern and tulip motif, and the long handle that says "Don’t get too close!" to the fire. I wonder what Isabelle was thinking as she made this image; was it a detached exercise in observation, or was she somehow trying to connect to something in her past? Maybe she thought of it as an exercise in form and geometry—the waffle iron as a stand-in for some other kind of modernist grid. Artists riff off one another across time, so maybe Isabelle was answering Agnes Martin, or maybe even Sol Lewitt. Whatever it is, it makes me think of cooking and drawing as parallel activities, with their own histories, materials, and processes. I like how the image can go both ways.