DEAN DASS BIG DRAWING
Dean A. Dass
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Library of Congress,Rare Book Division
Brooklyn Museumof Art
Charlotte Printmaker's Society North Carolina
DavidsonCollege, Davidson,North Carolina
Des Moines Art Center; Des Moines, Iowa
Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas
Free Library of Philadelphia
George MasonUniversity, Fenwick Library
Iowa State University, Ames
Jersey City Art Museum, New Jersey
Jyväskylä Art Museum, Jyväskylä, Finland
Louisiana State University, Rare Book Library, Baton Rouge
Louisiana State University, Hilliard University Art Museum
National Collection of Poland, Kraków
Nicholls State University, Rare Book Library
North Carolina Print & Drawing Society, Charlotte
Ohio State University, Rare Book Library
Philadelphia Museumof Art
Schoolof theMuseumof Fine Arts, Boston,W. Van Allen Clark Library
State of Iowa, Herbert Hoover Building, Des Moines
SouthernGraphics Council
Temple University, Philadelphia
University of Dallas, Irving
University of California, Santa Barbara, Rare Book Library
UUniversity of Central Florida, Rare Book Library
University of Colorado, Boulder, Rare Book Library
University of Denver, Special Collections Library
University of Iowa, Special Collections Library
University of Kansas,Lawrence
University of Nebraska, Kearney
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls
University of SouthDakota, Vermillion
University of Southern Indiana
University of Tennessee,JohnC. Hodges Special Collections Library
University of Virginia, Albert andShirley Small Special Collections Library
University of Virginia, Fralin Art Museum
University of Virginia Hospitals, Charlottesville
University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie
Virginia Commission for the Arts, Richmond
Virginia Museumof Fine Arts, Richmond
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Zuckerman Museum, KennesawState University
Coming to Terms with Paul Klee
Often, I find images to work with on sci-fi television, on my grandchildren’s video games and YouTube channels, and in my own photographs of horizons, night-time skies, and fires. For me drawing may be mostly a separate enterprise and relates to my painting especially in theme. To speak of line and color working together, however, recalls Paul Klee. Klee’s Fish Magic: that modest in size, most complex, bejeweled painting/collage that hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Let’s admire that painting for more than all the glowing, colored spots. In Klee’s painting we see the lower creatures, so-called, undivided, living and swimming freely in eternity, while we, literally in this painting, are caught on the edge. We look out in observation while simultaneously looking inward. Klee writes about this in detail both in his diaries and in his pedagogical writings: we are both conscious and self-conscious. Following Klee, it has always appealed to me to try to configure our condition.
But over the course of this Pandemic, I found myself saying Paul Klee and Ursula Le Guin in the same sentence. Le Guin was writing in a genre that is now called – not Science- but Speculative Fiction. Can’t we apply that same category to Klee’s work? In asking who we are, I believe Klee also asks where we are going. With Klee it is a question of longing. I want to join them both in this kind of speculation.
Yet somehow, after many years, re-reading Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest did not inspire me to paint a beautiful primordial earth. Just the opposite. Humans wearing protective headgear and images of spaceships crashing come readily to mind.
The light on the horizon is dim. It’s a probably a city in flames seen in low-resolution. From this distance it’s hard to tell anything. Those are not clouds of fireflies. We remember clouds of fireflies as children running through fields.
Our skies are filled with dissonance, discord, and conflict.
Blue Cloud 2024 36x69 inches
Red Ship 2024
35.5x70 inches
Schemata of the Clouds
37x68.5 inches
pencil, ink, gouache, acrylic, collage
Schemata
37x68.5 inches
2025
pencil, ink, collage, acrylic
Man in Helmet Walking in the Black Hills 2025
19x31
Ink, pencil, photolithograph,collageon varnished paper
Man in Helmet and Armor Looking Up
Ink, pencil, collage on varnished paper
Yellow Cloud Study for the Dissolution 2024 20x29 inches
Acrylic, gouache, marble dust, ink, pencil, collage, marble
Two in Helmets, Walking, Arms Outstretched
2024
14x31.5 inches
Acrylic, gouache, marble dust, ink, pencil, collage
Dark Cloud 2024
19.5x31.5 inches
Acrylic, gouache, ink, pigments, marble dust, collage
Woman with a Spear 2025
14.25x31.25 inches
Acrylic, gouache, marble dust, ink, pencil, collage
Man in Helmet 2024
14.25x31.25 inches
Acrylic, gouache, marble dust, ink, pencil, collage
Man in Helmet Armed Outstretched
Man in Helmet Running
Skeletons Warming Themselves
2025
16x35.5 inches
Ink, pencil, collage on varnished paper
We Went to the Black Hills 2024 20x29 inches
Acrylic, gouache, marble dust, photolithograph,gold leaf 24k, pencil, ink, collage $5,500
Cloud Study for the Dissolution of the Atoll 2025
19.5x25 inches
Gold leaf 24k, Armenian bole, pencil, collage
