in the flood story what was traumatic for me for what was what was left out. Dove signals land, everyone departs, and everything is beautiful (until Lot’s time). In the drawing called Bone [Noah], I depict the holocaust after the flood―Noah, looking over the hillside, has just realized the cost of his survival, while his wife waters a plant with water carried up the mountain from the valley. Technically, as the series progresses, my drawing style changes from careful rendering of the elements and a theatrical presentation to a drawing almost entirely comprised with pentimenti like in Pyramid [Moses and Aaron].
22: Some of your other pieces sometimes have an “office” quality or “family” elements, and I just won-
der in general if some of these works were the documenting of your change from an artist in New York to a teacher in the South?
DB: Unlike many of my friends in New York, I had no skills in carpentry, plumbing, or electricity (al-
though I could do it for my own loft when necessary). I didn’t have the coordination to wait on tables or the design skills to work in publishing. I discovered that I did have an ability to work in offices―filing, typing invoices, light typing, and bookkeeping. It was all hand done, before the introduction of computers and word processors. Because it was part-time, it permitted me to work on my plays and other writing. Bookkeeping was the best artist job I ever had since the work involved tidying up the past and leaving everything at zero; I could come to the studio without any lingering issues. That experience did influence my work. Of course, there is something mindless and numbing about filing and entering numbers into ledgers. I don’t believe any of the papers or ledgers were ever seen again after I stored them. For a couple of years I worked in two “kafkaesque” offices: a law office in mid-town and an insurance company located in the Upper East Side. In Saramago’s All the Names, any clerk who wanted to seek out a document from the storage labyrinth had to tie a string around his waist before being permitted to enter. Sometimes walking down the hallways of New York office buildings felt similar. The lifestyle change from New York to Little Rock was dramatic but not traumatic. In New York I appreciated being close to so much activity. Even if you didn’t take part in half the stuff, it rubbed off on you. Looking for avant-garde film? Check out B movies in Alphabet City. Traveling on the F line to Times Square? Discover a Keith Haring on the subway wall. Stuart Sherman is set up on the Staten Island Ferry. Charles Ludlam has opened a new play in the West Village and Phillip Glass is playing at St. Mark’s Church—Ginsberg is reading there later. It was a lifestyle for sure but it wore you out. This was especially true if you hadn’t made it yet. So Little Rock allowed me to slow down and start work I never had time to create in New York. This last spring I had the opportunity to travel around Arkansas meeting artists in their studios for a show I was curating. Their work was as eclectic and their commitment to exhibiting it as important as that of any artist I had met in Boston or New York. Since moving to Little Rock I have witnessed the development of a sophisticated artist scene and while many of us complain that serious collectors have a tendency to purchase our art in galleries outside of the state and that, except for one professional art supply store, we have to mail order supplies, most of us have thrived here. The cost of living, the beautiful land, the long and sustaining friendships with other Arkansas artists: Sammy