How My Drawing Ended Up in a Museum

Recently…

Dear Mr. De Genaro,
We are in the process of recording recent gifts and your drawing pictured below is among them. It came from the Estate of Judy Josephson Schreiber who lived in Mobile and Valdosta, Georgia.  We maintain artist records and I would very much like to know your date and place of birth.  Was there a title associated with this work? When did you create it? I noticed several similar ones on your website.  It would be very useful to know the background to this very distinctive approach. Congratulations on your ARTPRIZE. I was the curator at the Grand Rapids Art Museum many years ago. Please list us as having a work by you in the collection and keep us updated with your art activities.
Cordially,
Paul W, Richelson, Chief Curator
Mobile Museum of Art
4850 Museum Drive,  Mobile, AL 36608

Detail

This drawing, titled 11,340 People, was created in 1983 and was one of three which are related. The others are 3040 people and 34,846 People. They are part of a phase of working on intense detailed pictures of sketch figures over a period of a year.

At the time it was made, I was working to establish my uniqueness as an artist, and, wanted to demonstrate, even just physically, something superlative. My work is the Figure, and Identity, and constructivist interest in materials. I am primarily a sculptor, but do some graphic works. I’d say that this drawing is built as an object is constructed, from elements repeated to form a structure. As the drawing progressed, I saw the optical effects of the pattern created in repetition, and this lead me to create more works like this.

Aaron and Judith Josephson bought this drawing from a show at The Contemporary Artist Workshop in Chicago while I was in graduate study at SAIC in 1983. The price was $275 after the commission and I lived on that money.