Chestnut Park Drawings - By Ken Januski

Most of these abstract works were done by Ken Januski in the mid '80s in his Chestnut Street studio next to the Ben Franklin Hotel. The first drawing, 'Flaubert Goes To Jazz School #6', was one of a large series done at Cornell about 1980. Those drawings tried to combine the spare style of an author like Flaubert with the improvisational exhuberance of jazz. As in much of his work there is a tension between elements that point out the flatness of the medium and the tendency toward illusionistic space.

The next two drawing2, 'Spring Hill #3' and 'Spring Hill #4', were done in Kentucky in the early 1980s and show this same tension. Flatness is reinforced by the fact that it is collage; parts of the drawing are just pasted on. When he moved to Philadelphia in mid-1983 the shapes in the drawings became more organic and less geometric. He worked on these drawings for about year and called the series Chestnut Park to indicate creatures that might be found in a park. The name was meant to indicate a conscious decision to include rather than exclude references to the natural world in his art. During this time he also became less interested in pointing out the flatness of the medium, first moving to a shallow frieze-like space, and eventually to a more three-dimensional illusionistic space. This was a somewhat difficult decision since much of the art that was most attactive to Ken was modernistic, flat art, not illusionistic art. On the other hand he slowly began to feel that too much was being left out by banning both naturalistic references and illusionistic space. As he ended this series he also began working more in pastel and color as seen at Chestnut Park 2.

'Flaubert Goes To Jazz School #6 ', 24x36, charcoal, pastel and collage.