News

John Adelman follows the rules. Rules prescribe the subject for each of his drawings. Precise and odd, they dominate every mark.

The rules suggest a logical pattern, but finding purchase isn’t easy. Strange openings appear in the track. But lacunae are the pleasures of these rules—there’s delight in clicking off their mysteries. For instance, what formula delivers an embroidered wall hanging? Ought it to be inherited, bartered for—should you swipe it? What code is it that assigns a letter to a wire, and what is the code’s significance in a scheme that ultimately comes down to even numbers in blue, odd numbers in black? I think wonder is the point. After all, the natural pattern of material object, mental image, and language seems like it ought to be a track of simple truths but, of course, it never is.

I can’t answer the differences in John Adelman’s rules, but I can give you a good anecdote about the artist. First, it’s important to know that he often uses a dictionary for source material. He moves through the dictionary word by word, employing words and the fullness of their definitions in his art. In a drawing like Exchange, a handwritten definition makes the line and rules make the pattern, including when to use black gel ink and when to use blue.

Adelman used one dictionary, a 1989 Webster’s edition, straight through to the word “half.” Then Hurricane Ike took it away. The wind and rain that undid so much in Galveston Bay brought only a single sustained leak to Adelman’s Houston studio. That leak was directly above his dictionary.

Somehow, his dictionary was the only thing damaged.

It’s pretty to think about what would have happened had the dictionary not gotten swamped. Adelman is prolific enough, he probably would have gotten through it. And then there would be all these works of art out of a single scientific document. In this age of online sales, he could have found another 1989 edition. He could then just take up where he left off. But finding a replacement would somehow fall out of the formula—it would screw up the rules. Instead, Adelman started from A in a different dictionary, this one a 1979 Webster’s edition. He’s still young enough to get all the way through it—compulsive enough, too.