The Odyssey, Homer

Samuels’ drawing The Odyssey of a patch of street renders a scaled 21 x 310-feet stretch of scarred asphalt onto a 92 x 33-inch sheet of paper. With the help of a magnifying glass, you discover that the drawing is made from handwriting that word for word transcribes the entire text of Homer’s Odyssey, the epic poem of war and homecoming. The cracked asphalt is the street in front of Samuels’ home. The text winds its way down one side of the sheet of paper returning up the other side, back to her home, and ends with the text’s call to bring a halt to the great leveler, War.

Before beginning to write, Samuels affixed a photo-mask of the street’s crevices and potholes over the paper. After the text was written, she peeled away the mask removing some of the text. Where the text was destroyed, the drawing was created.

Title: The Odyssey, Homer

Size: 92″ x 33″ x 1″
Materials: Ink on Twinrocker handmade paper, Magnifiers, Audio recording
Date: 2010
Photographed by: Thomas Little