The drawings in this series are part of Joana Avillez’s solo show, From The Desk Of, on view at Picture Room from October 14th – December 24th, 2022. The exhibition presents a decade of sketches and illustration culled from the artist’s sketchbooks and notepads, many of which were originally created to animate publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Apartamento, and more.
In reflecting on From The Desk Of, Avillez writies, “The drawing’s deepest desire is to be turned into an illustration: to be in print. But even after this wish glows in CMYK, the original remains. What or who are they, these mille-feuilles I have kept all these years? They are mysterious… a flash of a moment sandwiched between scribbles, inside travel notebooks, and folders containing ripped corners from paper tablecloths drawn on during dinners out in Lisbon. Like a leaf full of holes or an iridescent bug that croaked on your windowsill or finding the contents of last winter’s coat pocket. From The Desk Of presents each of these inky scraps as a specimen in its own right. The real thing before wrinkles were ironed; before the drawing became an illustration. Where ideas are seamlessly, lovingly, drooled out; laboriously realized and then totally nixed, covered in my fingerprints. The very paper trail itself.”
Joana Avillez, b. 1986, New York, NY, is an illustrator from and still living in NYC. Avillez' drawings and illustrated stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Zeit Magazin, Apartamento, and various other publications. She has done projects with The Museum of Modern Art and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Avillez has collaborated with fashion houses such as Valentino and Hermès. Currently she is working on an illustrated edition of Joseph Mitchell's 1952 classic The Bottom of the Harbor, to be published by Penguin Random House in 2023.
Pen and pencil on paper, Signed
Unique
Custom framing recommended in Beveled Poplar with artwork floated on archival mat board. Please see here for framing options and make a note of frame preference when checking out in the Order Comments.
