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And So Forth (1978)

Initially conceived as an extension of my Constructivist Fictions, And So Forth is similarly concerned with telling a story entirely in the language of lines, with an intentionally limited vocabulary of shapes, and with “events” that are a single page in length and square in frame. This new work differs, however, from the Constructivist Fictions in two crucial qualities. These images are not perfect, four-sided symmetries, although the shapes within each drawing often echo each other geometrically. Secondly, in this work the progress from image to image, from page to page, from event to event, is not systematic but associational. Thus, one image does not necessarily lead to another, but each could precede or succeed any of the others. The loose pages can be shuffled and reshuffled to taste, or even hung along a wall so that they can all be seen at once, or deposited looseleaf in an envelope, or put into a spring binder. In certain structural respects, this new work is closer to my collection of single-sentence stories, Openings & Closings (1975), than to my previous visual fiction. By some measures, this new work represents an advance for me; by others, it is perhaps a step behind. In most respects, And So Forth is something new.