The 11th Challenge

THE COMMON PENCIL
Just as the printing press spread reading across Renaissance Europe,the pencil spread writing. Wood or metal or paper supported a carbon and clay stylus ever ready to mark, cipher, or draw.

ITS ERASER
The eraser followed the pencil. Leonardo used a knife to scrape away mistakes. Felt cloths worked; gums of plant resin worked better. Finally a tropical latex was named rubber by the chemist Priestley to honor its superiority in rubbing out error. The eraser as we know it was born.

The pencil and eraser served craftsmen, tradesmen and artists whose ideas grow in the constant vision and revision of creativity. These loyal servants of the creative hand became entwined with its work. Who has not stared at a pencil hoping it might invent answers of its own accord?

THE CHALLENGE
Make the pencil and/or the eraser the subject, not the servant, of your inventiveness. Shape them, compose with them, construct with them. Play with their forms, functions and meanings. Make art that is truly of the pencil.

The 11th Leonardo Benefit
Thursday, April 7th 5:30 - 9pm

Celebrate creativity.
Enjoy fine champagne,
and savor inventions
from the creative kitchen of Doug Coffin.

Support the the work of the Eli Whitney Museum
through your presence and your purchase of
artwork invented for this event.

Of a helicopter that will not fly:
An eraser emboldens a pencil.
Only an imagination free to err will find truth.

Principal Underwriter
The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

Sponsors
Brown-Forman
B-P Products
Lehman Brothers Engravers
Robert Lisak Photography
Contributors Artspace
Moka
Service Point

THE ELI WHITNEY MUSEUM • 915 WHITNEY AVE
HAMDEN, CT • 203.777.1833