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John O’Connor

“Babcock Doddered,” 2023, Colored pencil and graphite on paper, 52 x 36.25 inches
I discovered a long line of text in my sketchbook from a few years ago. I had no recollection of having written it or of how I came up with the language. This was a strange phenomenon—not remembering something that I had conceived of and which was so speci c. So, I wrote the text that began with “Babcock dodderred…” in the center of the drawing, using an eye chart font: Snellen. For several days after that, just before falling asleep and as soon as I woke up in the morning, I tried to remember the modi ed text. I drew these similar but mis-remembered texts under and above the original. Then, the next night I tried to recall this altered sentence, and each morning I tried to remember the second text. I was interested in giving form to the mental states of hypnagogia (moment when you transition from wakefulness to sleep) and hypnopompia (moment moving from sleep to wakefulness). In each state, disorientation occurs and memory is affected by various stimuli. The language of this drawing gives form to these transitional states of consciousness, as well as the dissolution of memory through language and time.