My Little Pictures

James Hall (b. 1954) is an explorer of both the big and the small. His work imagines fantastic universes - glowing beings, spacecrafts, and portals - but always returns to the modest dramas of everyday life. My Little Pictures, his first solo exhibit in 12 years, brings together a bold mix of media (ink, graphite, acrylics, collage, assemblage) into a highly personal body of work. 

The show is dominated by three series. In A Maze of Wormholes, pencil-drawn tubes fork, twist, and knot into a labyrinthine composition extending across 12 panels. 35 Years of What I Wanted to Remember is a handmade artist book and pop-art labor of love. For decades, Hall gathered bits of packaging, advertisements, and other printed ephemera. He arranged them all into pleasing constellations, xeroxed the results, and colored these black and white images with vibrant color pencil gradients. My Little Pictures started from counseling sessions dealing with Hall’s schizophrenia. Hall says, “I started making little pictures as a means of release of emotions and creating a method of recovery.” From 2012 to 2021, Hall inked more than five hundred 2” x 4” images, with subjects ranging from the surreal to the quotidian. Together they build an honest portrayal of an inquisitive spirit managing life with mental illness. 

In conjunction with the exhibition, Project Onward presents a publication: 35 Years of What I Wanted to Remember, a brightly-colored album of Hall’s pop-folk-art opus (available at the 08.21 Book-Signing + Artist Talk).