"It's not the pencil that draws, it is your
hand."
Whether drawing lines or inscribing
words, the act of making marks lures ideas into the physical world. Hands
perceive and reveal things that our eyes and conscious minds may never know. We
discover things about ourselves and our thoughts by engaging the hand in a
mark-making process.
San Francisco artist Agelio Batle's Graphite Objects are both a
poetic metaphors as well as functioning drawing tools; all of its surfaces can write.
Committed to making art from materials that are part of daily experience, the
artist originated this work by casting his own hand in
pencil lead, graphite, each day for the calendar year 1999. Wishing to share the
insights gleaned from that sculptural process with a wider public, he has continued to cast the objects shown here.