Suellen Rocca

Suellen Rocca's publication, a facsimile of her own design prototype, comprises nine drawings she selected from her sketchbook. These drawings for her exhibition at the Secession show her weaving together visual elements from different stages of her long career to create an entirely new group of works. Among Rocca's subjects are renderings of her dollhouse furniture, recalling her childhood; a handbag, a key element of the personal iconography she developed in the 1960s from advertising and other pop-culture sources, and a ubiquitous presence in her work from that time; and imagery that she described as "more internal" - depictions of anonymous torsos, plants, birds, and other creatures - that came to characterize her later paintings and drawings, beginning in the early 1980s. As Rocca made these drawings and conceived of her book's format, she was contemplating both the passing of time and time's cyclical aspect, the repetition of hours, days, and seasons that make up a life, prompting her decision to reproduce the drawings on both sides of a single continuous sheet of paper that can be arranged in a circle.