Self-taught artist Matt Kish
wanted one last shot at creating something notable. The project he chose was illustrating Herman Melville’s 1851 literary classic Moby-Dick, one drawing per day for each of the 552 pages in his Signet Classic edition paperback version of the novel. It took him almost one and a half years of exhausting work, but it changed everything.
By posting the daily illustrations on his blog, he caught the attention of the sizeable worldwide Moby-Dick community. That led to a contract with the prestigious Tin House press, which earlier had published the celebrated Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow by artist Zak Smith. Read more about Kish and the exhibit here.
CHASING THE WHALE AND OTHER ENDLESS PURSUITS continues through Aug. 14 at the Contemporary Arts Center. More info: contemporaryartscenter.org.
This article appears in May 4-11, 2016.
