Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass is a drawing made from a hand-written transcription of America’s epic poems of democracy, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Each page is hand-written in a single line across the drawing like an individual blade of grass. Together, the book’s 438 pages form a 92 x 33-inch field of grass. Although the drawing is a literal embodiment of the poems’ central metaphor and theme—One’s self I sing, a simple separate person, / Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse—the making of this drawing was an act of engagement that challenges the distance of a viewer when contrasted to the intimacy of a reader.

Title: Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

Size: 92″ x 33″ x 1″
Materials: Ink on Twinrocker handmade paper, Magnifiers, Audio recording
Date: 2011
Photographed by: Thomas Little