Being and Becoming 1a

Worden Day

Wordon Day focused much of her artistic attention to contemplative subjects that included landscape, abstractions, calligraphy and the cosmos, oftentimes meditating on a subject for several series. This drawing, titled "Being and Becoming 1a" is probably from a series she was working on in the 1970s.

The theory of "being and becoming" is defined by The Metaphysacist as an: "Information philosophy [which] greatly simplifies the classic dichotomy between 'Being' and 'Becoming' that has bothered metaphysicians from Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle to Martin Heidegger.

"'Being' is part of the essential nature of some abstract entities. They are ideas that exist in the immaterial realm of pure information and do not change. 'Becoming' is the essential nature of concrete material objects, which are always changing."

Arranged as a grid drawn in graphite, Worden Day has meticulously planned out a gradation of tonality, using colored pencils to fill in each square. The overall image might viewed be a landscape, reclining figure, or just an abstraction in which each individual square has its own identity and yet is an important element to the whole.

Day studied at Atelier 17 in New York in the early 1940s. Information on her innovative methods of printing her early woodcuts can be found in 'A Spectrum of Innovation...' by David Acton, page 190.

She was born in 1916 in Columbus, Ohio, and earned her B.A. at age eighteen from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in 1934. She moved to New York City where she studied with George Grosz, Jean Charlot and Hans Hofmann. Day also studied at the New School of Social Research, the Florence Crane School, and the Art Students' League with artists Maurice Sterne and Emilio Amero. She worked at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 in 1943, and in 1966 she received her M.A. degree from New York University at the age of fifty.

Worden Day taught at the Pratt Institute, the New School of Social Research, the Art Students' League and the University of Wyoming at Laramie. She was honored with J. Rosenwald Awards and two Guggenheim fellowships. Her work is represented in the collections of Library of Congress, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Worcester Art Museum, to name a few.