Karl Haendel

Karl Haendel: I call them theme-time drawings.

Narrator: Karl Haendel.

Karl Haendel:  A few years ago I started listening to this Bob Dylan internet radio show called Theme Time Radio Hour. And every week Bob Dylan played a bunch of songs from sort of the canon of American music, 1930s to like 70s, based on a certain theme. Ideas, lyrics, concepts that come up again and again in song. 

And in my own practice for a number of years since I’ve started making drawings I’ve always been interested in these sort of like categories or types of images. And building my own kind of language with which to explore how images make meaning for us. I sense that like certain images or ideas keep getting reiterated throughout culture, and I thought that I would take each of his categories or his themes every week and I would make a drawing based on that same theme. He did one on food, he did one on coffee, he did one on alcohol. 

Usually I photograph the things to make the drawings to sort of provide an outline and sort of a reference for making a drawing. And sometimes I photograph things like a newspaper article, sometimes I photograph objects, sometimes I photograph things that I draw and then re-photograph, so it can be like anything goes on this.