John Ivesmail's Essay

Dating from the earliest days of December 1990, School Sketchbook five (SSB.5) contents itself to facsimile the representations evident in the Extraneous Drawings forty-eight to fifty-four (ED.48-54). Despite these images' close approximation to their subject matter, they hold limited appeal for this reader. Emergent as if the fledging diarist was charting the callous depths of her melancholy, the succession of totems devoted to the brutes that sentry the Jelish grounds are remarkable only due to their function in drawing the young Jelish back to the delights of the exterior world. The majority of the Extraneous Drawings devoted to her faithful mutt, Bones, are completed on the verso of wallpaper that was shed as Vanessa and I sought to exonerate the living room of its ghastly wrapping. One points to these drawings as the harmonizing counterpart to the earlier frottages that dominate the latter pages of School Sketchbook three. Also of note is the persistent redress of the 'mutt landing from a leap' image that is replicated on at least five separate leaves (a sixth will be added in form of a later Extraneous Drawing - ED.68). Both of these examples underline an ardent desire on the part of the nascent artist to transgress the tomb-like confines of her anguish.