As with the previous two documents, the third Schoolbook is in a reasonably
good condition. The document has escaped the water damage evident in
the later Schoolbooks and many of the Extraneous
Drawings. However the
profusion of graphite within the tome has left many pages originally
free of graphite now afflicted with the material.
The obverse of the document is littered with pictures of the pop band
‘New Kids on the Block’ accompanied by scribbles that see
Naomi declaring the singer Jordan her favourite whilst her best friend,
Hannah, opts for Joey. Four of the book’s pages have been removed
by either the artist or by a third party.
The document dates from September the 30th to approximately the 23rd of
October (entered in the opening pages of the subsequent Schoolbook), making
the paperback the most prolifically executed of all nine. The general
focus of the document is a continuation of the ‘Natural Forms’
project initiated in the preceding Schoolbook. Pencil drawings taken from
floral patterns found on the wallpaper of the Jelish home seek to re-asseverate
the equanimity of the floral models found in both the preceding School
Sketchbook (SSB.2) and Extraneous Drawings
(ED.18-40).
The efficacy of these opening pages is immediately curtailed on news of
her father’s death, literally signposted in a dramatic fashion by
the capture of the girls’s grieving grandmother, revealed through
the absent half of the flower the youngster was outlining at the time.
This image finds its supplementary doppelganger in Extraneous
Drawing #41, which presses the sullen visage of Naomi’s Grandfather against
the support bearing an envelope addressed to the precocious artist’s
mother (a parallel that will be later repeated in Extraneous
Drawings #66 &
#67). We find both vessels of expression – School
Sketchbook and
Extraneous Drawing - finally divergent in response to external proceedings.
Following the image, the third Schoolbook plays host to multiplicities
on the same theme - Naomi’s febrile rubbings tracing the internal
parameters of home and mind. Of the entire Jelish oeuvre, this anthology
of dictions is the most rapaciously accomplished with twenty-six leaves
barraged in only a fortnight. This graphite assault coincides with a total
absence of Extraneous Drawings, as if the two formerly divergent reservoirs
had now subsumed into a single lake of expression.