CAROLE TURBIN 917-627-2639 cturbin2@gmail.com
In the early 1990s when I began to draw again after many decades away from art, I chose subjects that had much in common with my previous interests as a teacher, scholar, and writer. My essays and books on everyday life in the late 19th to early 20th centuries shed light on often unnoticed, taken-for-granted aspects of women's labor and household work as well as women's and men’s dress. Similarly, my drawings in pencil or charcoal on paper or lithographic crayon on stone depict ordinary objects and settings that most casual observers barely notice. As a scholar I admired the skill of artisans, dressmakers, and tailors who I researched and wrote about. As an artist I view my precise though expressive drawings as analogous to the carefully crafted objects I depict, such as household plumbing and the water towers atop many New York City buildings.
Precision in drawing does not exclude drama and mood. I work in black and white tones that evoke the past as it is conveyed in old photographs and cinema, which invite the audience to imagine color and meaning, much as readers of books envision scenes of people and objects. Although my artwork does not depict human figures, it has a human dimension. My images of sinks, pipes, and water towers are metaphors for our bodily plumbing and psyches, within which much is often unseen and unfelt, and is both efficient and problematic. When I do depict a figure, the Statue of Liberty, she is not the idealized woman in New York harbor but groupings of bronze-plated souvenir models, which tourists purchased in the 1940s to ‘70s, to remind them of their visit.
My memoir, Souvenir (Full Court Press, Englewood Cliffs 2019) incorporates my artwork, photographs, and a narrative to tell a story about myself, my mother, and my father, who sold souvenirs of New York City to retail shops in Times Square, Chinatown, and the West Side piers.