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Walking piece 1969

Untitled (Pocket Drawings)

Comments
Drawings
New York, NY, USA

abstraction

Collection · 17 items

Conceptual

Collection · 14 items

drawing

Collection · 96 items

The Everyday

Collection · 49 items

abstraction

Collection · 17 items

Conceptual

Collection · 14 items

drawing

Collection · 96 items

The Everyday

Collection · 49 items
William Anastasi’s Pocket Drawings are made by marking folded sheets in his pocket while walking, creating abstract traces of movement. Part of his “unsighted” practice, they explore chance, motion, and perception, translating physical experience into subtle visual forms.

Anastasi folded these sheets into eight squares, making them small enough to fit into his pocket. As he walked, he held a tiny, soft pencil against the exposed paper inside the cramped space of his pocket; the resulting marks graph his movements. When he deemed a section complete, Anastasi refolded the sheet, creating a new blank surface, and the process began again. “I love walking,” the artist has explained. “I find that walking does something to my thinking, to my mental process, that is different from sitting or lying down.” These “pocket drawings” are part of a broader practice that Anastasi has described as “unsighted,” including works made while walking (holding a pad, he looks at his destination as he draws) and riding the subway (the train’s stops and starts, bumps and turns, direct the line’s size, weight, and orientation).

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As found on MoMA's website.

APA style reference

Anastasi, W. (1969). Untitled (Pocket Drawings). walk · listen · create. https://walklistencreate.org/walkingpiece/untitled-pocket-drawings/
Submitted by: Dani Spadotto

tracktivism

A field of activist performance that utilises walking and moving and talking in rural landscapes to address issues of environmental, social or political concern (Jess Allen).

Added by Deirdre Heddon
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