PROJECT SPACE

“Wright has been a designer, a teacher, a single father, and a survivor of challenging health crises, continuously responding in his art,” Hughes adds. “Cartoon characters, couples and violence are ubiquitous as are literary references to the Bible, the Greeks, and poets. This canon is not predictable—Miley Cyrus might burst on stage twerking, or Death may send a text message our way.”

As a Way of Starting Again: Ira Wright’s Notebooks


This installation of 80-plus drawings from Wright’s notebooks offers a privileged candid view into a theatre of the mind revealing itself with wit and sensitivity. “The nervous system flows into a vast repertoire of marks in which projects are outlined, feelings purged, obsessions limned, and trivia jotted down,” says Project Space curator Hannah Hughes. “Mastery of academic life drawing, commercial-art techniques, and art history underlies even an apparent scribble. However, the notebooks are not intended as grand statements for bright lights and strange eyes. Instead they appear as an un-ending search, maybe unresolved or inscrutable, but questing, always questing.”

Also on hand are the artist’s self-published literary works, which include novels, memoirs, and an opera, all presented in casual notebook form

Ira Wright