by CHRISTINE TEMIN
The Boston Globe, 10/6/93
Beginning on the first day of spring in 1991, the Cambridge artist Prilla Smith Brackett committed
herself to making a drawing every day for a year. She drew her houseplants, her garden, the Mount
Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. Further afield, she drew the scenery she saw on trips to Costa Rica
and Madagascar. she drew the day-to-day progress of an early tulip, first peeking through its winter
mulch, then bravely breaking into bloom, finally with its petals about to drop toward the ground,
completing the cycle.
All 365 drawings are on view in a small gallery at the DeCordova Museum, as part of the museum's
"New Work/New England series. Arranged vertically by week, with the months separated by a few
inches of wall space, the drawings form a visual calendar, a record of how the artist slowed the pace
of a late-20th-century life to match nature's rhythm, a record of how she learned to look.
Brackett's project belongs to several strains of art. At the simplest level, it follows the pre-
photography tradition of travelers who brought their watercolors and brushes on their journeys and
painted what they saw. Brackett's show is also in the more complex tradition of the Monet series
that depict the same scene in different seasons or times of the day, a noble formula that has also
been followed by contemporary artists including Jennifer Bartlett. And Brackett's work at the
DeCordova is also related to that of such contemporary artists as Hamish Fulton and Richard Long,
who record their expensive ramblings with the sparest of means: words and numbers written on
gallery walls, a circle of rocks, and so on. Like them, Brackett creates an overall sense of place and
time through a disciplined form - in her case, the gridlike structure of her calendar.
The trouble with Brackett's show is that she does take so many different tacks. Had she been daring
enough to draw precisely the same scene each day for a year, the overall result would probably have
been stronger and certainly more focused. As it is, she jumps from rainforest to a dying primrose to a
view of her own knees crammed into an economy class seat on a Paris to New York flight. There's a
scattered quality to the show, not only in the subjects, but in the different styles Brackett uses so
skillfully. some drawings have color, others don't; some are stark pencil lines; others are lush ink
washes; some are extreme close-ups; others are broader views. As an entity, they don't hold
together.
Taken one by one, though, they're often beautiful, and sometimes several of them seem to
collaborate on a narrative, for example the tulip'[s tale. And Brackett is observant, noting the
different way that willows and sycamores branch, the willow's trajectory resembling fireworks, the
sycamore's gnarled and knotted.
The May drawings blaze with spring color so loud it's almost indecent. Rhododendrons and azaleas
are so heavily smeared with fuchsia and orange blooms that their woody branches don't show at all.
July features strong views from Brackett's mother's porch overlooking Duxbury Bay; One is purply
twilight; in another, trees lining the shore are black silhouettes that look like they're preparing for a
thunderstorm. In August, the brussel sprouts Brackett had been tracking since spring really take off,
while September is dominated by eggplants in opulent dark purples; Brackett is particularly good with
eggplants.
October opens with a tree doing a Halloween dance, and concludes with another tree, this one
morose in the rain. December has a couple of completely colorless weeks, which make you
understand January, when Brackett heads for Madagascar. Returning home at the end of the month,
she records scenes of an icy Fresh Pond.
A theme that recurs is the spent flower, no longer able to hold up its head. Brackett records
individual tulips, primroses and even whole bouquets headed for the trash bin. In March 1992 she
finishes her year with a boldly striped amaryllis that is all sass until it, too, finally droops, its
evanescent glamour gone. it;s comforting to be able to travel back in time, courtesy of Brackett's
earlier drawings, to see the flower in its days of glory.
©Christine Temin 1993