I had a sculpture show down in New York City, and then I worked for about two or three years making sculpture. I had a second show of sculpture, and my dealer was happy with the results. He didn’t sell everything, but sold a lot of it.
And then one day, my dealer called me, and he said, “There is a curator here from the Whitney Museum. He’s looking for young artists who draw.” And he said, “Do you draw?”
And the fact is at that point, I had done a couple of drawings. And now, by the term “drawings,” I mean, specifically, pictures of things happening, of people doing things. And I had done these drawings because in the winter, my sculpture studio, which was a couple of miles from my house, got so cold that I couldn’t work in it at night. So, I had to find something to do at night, and what I found to do was to sit down and just draw pictures. So, I was trying to draw pictures, and I had a few of those. And I told my dealer that that’s what I was doing on cold, frosty nights.
And he said, “Well, why don’t you send a couple of them down?”
I said, “You don’t want to see these,” because this was a curator from the Whitney, which is a very important New York City museum. I said, “You aren’t going to like these. He’s probably not going to like them.”
He said, “Send them down. Send them down.”
So, I packaged them up, and I sent them down. And he calls me and says, “You know, this guy at the Whitney thinks these are fabulous drawings. He wants to put them in the show.”
So, that’s a fairly big deal. I think I was 27 or 28. It’s unusual. That really is a young artist. You know, it’s a very old basketball player, but it’s a very young artist. And so I thought to myself, “Gee, I’ve got these drawings in the Whitney Museum.” I even had a little catalogue with my name in it, with the other people in the exhibit. It was a group show, and I thought, “Well, maybe I should think about this a little bit more.” So, I spent a little bit more of my time drawing pictures and a little less of my time making sculpture.
