A Case for Blotter Art

There are moments inside our past that shape our vision. Going through my childhood photo albums, I catch a glimpse of Anna in early grades, a nice girl who, if she were still alive, will not know how even just in grade 4, she was pointing the way to freedom of expression. There’s a lesson here links in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.

We have often wondered if Anna’s life probably have taken an alternative turn had she lived her early grades from the sixties in the event the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the aid of ink blotters at school. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the difficult way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in a mud-bath. It took us months to master the skill of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; should you wanted to save time, selecting far wiser to experience the tortoise.

But Anna had not been turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a means to Bali if we were still stuck from the grade 3 reader; from the fourth grade, when people with older siblings were all agog over Elvis, she can find no more passionate than Japanese prints.

Going Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God knowning that the writer would find his share of godliness from the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. From the three, the blotter was the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is determined by how you control the ink.” There was clearly much else that needed to be controlled as well, according to Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down in the child, her eyes blue and hard above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”

When Anna looked over her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew an easy, thin line over Anna’s script; the blotter followed; there came more red lines, more words slashed away.

I watched Anna after she returned to her desk. She began writing, dabbing the blotter after her pen in true Sister Mary Michael fashion. For a time, it seemed that Anna had learnt her lesson. But when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I noticed that it had been the blotter that was absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a location at the top right-hand corner with the sheet; she stuck the nib during the location and watched the darkness grow; a couple of details using the nib and also the blotch became a part of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches on the absorbent paper plus more dabs until the entire blotter become a sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Beyond her desk came more blotter sheets. Instead of holes, she made lines this time, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from one corner to a higher; she paused just long enough to thicken the center stretch having to break the flow until the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and also the blotter sat on her desk like a chocolate web.

It absolutely was a young type of Acid Art, so distinctive it made nice hair climb onto end. But Sister Mary Michael can’t quite observe that.
For more information about Acid Art take a look at this useful internet page: click for info