Prospect: The Journal of an Artist

Based upon journals she wrote at the age of seventy, the author's reflections on her life as an artist, mother, grandmother, and teacher provide a poignant recollection of home, friends, and the things that inspired her as an artist. 10,000 first printing.

"I feel a certain urge to tell what it is like to be an artist in this culture," explains noted sculptor Truitt (Daybook). Here she explores the various currents in her own life, particularly the personal relationships that have both contributed to and impeded her artistic output. Ostensibly a record of one year in Truitt's life (from the spring of 1991, when she turned 70, to the spring of 1992), this memoir ultimately becomes a more comprehensive autobiography, as Truitt traces the evolution of her artistic vision and her sense of self. Her account of her own artistic career becomes an illuminating study of a complex symbiosis between life and art, while her generous assessments of the work of colleagues celebrate the richness and diversity of contemporary American art. Truitt's frank confrontation with her fears and her ambitions, her successes and her failures, and her frequent juxtapositions of the mundane and the profound make this a particularly compelling and insightful self-portrait.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The sculptor's third meditation on life and art (after Daybook, 1982; Turn, 1986) triumphs in its clearheadedness but fails to satisfy in its paths of resolution. As in Turn, Truitt explores the end of the life cycle, this time structuring her work around her 70th year, when she is regaled for decades of achievement with a major retrospective in New York yet penalized with mandatory retirement at the University of Maryland. The gravity of the events is unsettling; she calls herself ``officially old.'' Although she muses briefly throughout the memoir on the physical manifestations of aging- -diminished energy and the need for improved safety measures in the house--she concentrates on how her mind refines itself with age. This means engaging in the ``interplay [between past and present] that is making aging the most interesting thing that has ever happened to me.'' Such interplay involves central elements of her life--her children, her artistic career, the artists' colony Yaddo (for which she had been acting director), historical figures who embody her personal truths, the natural world around her. Her observations are wise in their understanding of limits and psychology, and true to her lifelong admiration for the Stoic philosophers, but the effect by book's end is somewhat cramped and final. Appreciated are her patches of animation, which show up in her analyses of her artworks and the work of critics, particularly those who attempt the ``invidious'' practice of ascribing motive to an artist's work. Also welcome are the quirky anecdotes, like that of the pilgrimage to one of her grade-school teachers, who informed her that--despite Truitt's view of herself as a youthful rebel--she had not been an interesting child. Though at times enervating in its stoicism and sureness, this invites thought about the intellectual flavor of life's final years. It is an honorable goal; if only this particular trip had been more involving for those acompanying Truitt. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Reaching her seventieth year was a watershed for Truitt. While anticipating greatly decreased income because of the loss of her university teaching position due to a mandatory retirement law, she heralded a vital 30-year career with a retrospective at the New York gallery that exhibits her sculpture. Truitt's decision, however, to keep a journal during this period was a gift to readers. Rarely does a visual artist succeed, as Truitt does here, in articulating the myriad emotions connected with the art-making process, and the subsequent upheaval involved in mounting a show, awaiting its reception, and selling (or, less fortunately, not selling) the work. This luminous new book seamlessly weaves together the daily life of an artist with a memoir of her early years--of choices made and decisions pursued--and the rewards that come her way as a mother, grandmother, and friend. As in her earlier books, Daybook and Turn, Truitt's articulate voice resonates with thoughtful insights and honest emotions. Alice Joyce

More reflections on art, life, and growing older; a sequel to the celebrated Daybook.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.