Following the young artist's comprehension of the inefficacity of both School Sketchbook and Extraneous Drawing to provide able salvation, the Private Sketchbook is instigated on the 18th of April 1991. The document ascends to serve as the most furtive of all the documents this interculator's eye has caressed, so dense yet so delicate. The early leaves of the hardback reintroduce the ocular realm of knowledge so visible in the nascent Extraneous Drawings, conceivably suggesting the Private Sketchbook may take on the property those early inscriptions were blessed with. The document performs the utility of a visual memoir, each entry simultaneously illuminating and obscuring each index discarded posticous. No wonder the infant genius veiled it submerged in the soft confines of her mattress.
cover of School Sketchbook #8
A seditious streak in the young Jelish grows noticeable in the later documents with the affixing of a throng of magazine clippings, each home to a depiction of the pop singer Madonna, to the integument of the eighth School Sketchbook. These ribald decorations are extended into the preliminary pages of Sketchbook eight, a trio of Extraneous Drawings (ED.72-74) as well as the bindings of the final School Sketchbook (SSB.9) and the Private Sketchbook. In the eighth School Sketchbook this results in an obscure conflation of (low) cultural and (high) classical tropes with the Madonna adorning the cover proximal to the Madonna of the pages twenty-six and seven (SSB.8-26/27). Is it too complicated to view the gathering of these images as a rebellious last stand, a thrust against the staunch Catholicism that framed both Naomi's mourning and education? I think not.
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