1 of 3
Gregory Blackstock is sixty–one years old. He speaks about a dozen languages and plays any number of musical instruments, but his greatest talent is as an artist: his artwork has appeared at galleries in Seattle, where he lives, and about five years ago he took early retirement from a job he had held for twenty–five years in order to devote himself fully to art and music. To cap off this late–blooming career, last year Princeton Architectural Press published a substantial collection of his drawings.
In light of this impressive resumé, some readers may be surprised to learn that the job from which Blackstock retired was, in his own description, that of "pot–&–dishroom steward" at the Washington Athletic Club. That is, he washed pots. It is also curious that, among the many instruments he can play, his strong preference is for the accordion, "because it's loud." His insistence on playing the accordion at the opening of his 2004 show at the Garde Rail Gallery must have made for an unusual evening for the art–lovers who showed up.
Gregory Blackstock is autistic, and because of his extraordinary gifts he is called a "savant" (a problematic word, I feel). Like many autistic people, Blackstock has a passion for order and precision, which shows up in any number of ways. For instance, the autobiography he hand–wrote for his book, Blackstock's Collections, takes the form of a list—"1. MY DATE OF BIRTH … 2. MY PREVIOUS SCHOOLS OF 1950 TO 1964 … 3. MY USUAL CITY NEWSPAPER ROUTE PERIOD"—and in listing his employment history he notes that he began his job at the Washington Athletic Club on September 9, 1975 and retired on January 12, 2001. Though I said that Blackstock worked there for twenty–five years, he prefers to say that it was twenty–five–and–a–third years.
This precision is central to Blackstock's art as well—though I have no idea whether it affects his accordion playing. The book is called Blackstock's Collections because each drawing is just that, a collection of things belonging to a particular category. I find especially intriguing Blackstock's tendency to give his drawings titles that begin with the definite article: "The Knives", "The Dentist's Tools, "The Memorable Vermont Scenes"—as though he aspires to utter completeness, gathering every member of a given set on a single page.
I take a special pleasure in his animals: "The Crows," "The Colorful King–Size Swallowtail Butterflies of the World," "The Gleaming Chows," and one grouping that for some reason lacks the definite article: "Monsters of the Deep" (perhaps because we don't know all the monsters that lurk in the oceans' unplumbed depths). They are rendered precisely, with careful and subtle shading. I'm a little disappointed, though, that those colorful swallowtails, like most of the other animals, are rendered in pencil only. Only his very recent drawings are likely to be in color: "The Noisemakers" (2005) is vivid, as is, fittingly enough, "The Art Supplies" (2004); and since Blackstock usually gets his colors from Crayola crayons, it's nice to see that he has made (also in 2005) a color drawing of the 64–crayon Crayola box.
Most of the "collections" are perfectly comprehensible, even if we suspect that it's not really possible to get all of "The Knives" on one page (Blackstock manages fifty–one of them, a considerable achievement). But Blackstock's passion for taxonomy gets him into some curious corners. Smack in the middle of "The Bells," among cowbells and bicycle bells and doorbells and the Liberty Bell and the bell of Big Ben, there's a diving bell. Not the same kind of thing, you say? But it's a bell, isn't it? I wonder how Blackstock would respond if someone were to point out to him that in his drawing of "The Drums" he omits the eardrum.
share this page
RSS Feed
