Back in the day, we’d carry “Blackbooks”, it’s what you’d call a sketchbook in regular circles. Yes, it was a hardback black sketchbook, black on the outside, clean white pages inside. You’d carry it around with you religiously, it was almost like your ID. If you saw someone else, anywhere with one, it was always “wassup, you write?” and if so, you’d share you sketches. All this before the internet, and if you ever came across another “writer” and he had stature, maybe he’d hit up your book, meaning he’d tag it, or do a quick throwie in it.
The top letters spell out the word “BUSY”, the bottom “SCAPE”. Even back then, I’d try to push the edge, I started to explore this concept that I called “Color Squares”. Later in life those color squares became canvas works, but that’s a tangent for a different day. Here, if you look at the bottom sketch, it was about how letters can interact with the color squares. Going through them, as in this case, or adding them to the backgrounds, stacked. Here it’s just a pencil sketch, but when it’s done on a wall, full color, it tells a different story. It was the dawn of my Urban Abstractions.
Anyways, this is a page that I ripped out of one of my blackbooks. A quick trip down memory lane.