Untitled drawings of Addie Lanier sleeping (SB.013), c. 1960

Narrator: Asawa’s daughter, Addie, discusses this drawing. 

Addie Lanier: I always remember my mother sketching, I mean, just pretty much all the time. The funny thing about her sketchbooks, of course, is the number of sleeping people and sleeping animals in the sketchbooks. My mother obviously was trying to catch time to draw whenever she could. This sketch of myself, the one where I'm laying with this kind of single line, repetitive line that is the background. I just think it's, again, it's one of her examples of where she's taken one little unit and she's made it stand for this whole figurative thing, for the most part, at least the background of it. 

But I also get a sense that somehow the line helps with conveying a mood, too. Some kind of atmosphere of the sitter. What's really funny is this line, which is this kind of incessant da da da da da, I can imagine me as a kid just jumping up and down all the time, and that's kind of my energy, and I'm finally asleep, and she's just doing this one little mark. To me, it's kind of comical, if I look at it that way.