The Lunch Break Sketches
Getting hired at the Guggenheim in December 2021 transformed not only my career, but my artistic practice as well. Over four years and eight months, I've filled, and recently digitally archived, sixteen sketchbooks with hundreds of drawings—returning again and again to the same handful of benches along Fifth Avenue and in Central Park, often between 87th and 89th Street on my breaks.
At first I was looking for an outlet. The earliest drawings (at bottom of page) are expressive and energetic, using whatever was in front of me as a place to project emotion. But over time I found myself returning to and trying to capture the specifics of the same vantage points. Rather than becoming bored with these familiar views, I became increasingly captivated by them, each return revealing something new.
Those benches became spaces of solace, breaking up days that could often feel redundant, punching and selling tickets . Fifteen minutes spent drawing on my break felt eons longer and more liberating than fifteen minutes spent scrolling. Concentrated attention expanded time and repetition revealed how familiarity doesn’t diminish wonder, but deepens it.
This collection is a small selection of favorites from those sixteen sketchbooks, with the most recent works at the top of the page. Together, they document not only the landscape around the Guggenheim, but the evolution of my own hand and ways of seeing and showing up.
