FRAGMENTS by David Carl
(Green Lantern Press)

David Carl’s Fragments is a novel told in snippets and vignettes.

The sentences follow the reason and order of a man’s explorative and scatter-brained thoughts, and is relatable by anyone who enjoys taking solo walks to air out thoughts (like I do).

Fragments is published by Green Lantern and available in that gem of a gallery in Wicker Park.

A relationship’s interactions portrayed in beautiful vignettes. Told from the perspective of a man obsessed with the nuances and constrictions of language “What about the fact that we have decided to allow the combination of approximately two dozen consonants and half a dozen vowels to represent everything we are capable of thinking, feeling, imagining?”

Carl’s novel in pieces detonates the preconceived novelistic form and collects the shrapnel and shreds of this glimpse into a literary relationship in a form that is perhaps a more accurate depiction of a train of thought.

The sole characters, He and She talk, or not.

When the characters don’t speak, the silence seen through His and Her eyes is more profound and meaning-laden than the spoken word. Their conversations spliced with musings on the metaphorical emptiness of a fridge, snippets of Gertrude Stein-like prose (e.g. “The Sea-Goat drinks the moon.”), tidbits of wisdom (“Too late do the innocent run for cover.”), and ponderance on linguistics (“The sentence is one of the fugitive parts of literature).

His and Her thoughts are caught in the convolution of someone who studies language and cannot separate his academic thoughts from the spoken language between He and She.

It would be frustratingly pedantic for Her, except She’s the same way.

Margaret Atwood once described one of her characters as “moving away from the imprecision of words.”

David Carl carefully moves closer.

John Himmelfarb’s self-published Trucks catalogs a series of this Chicagoan’s work. Although trucks have made appearances in his art throughout the past 40 years, the image has become more consistently prevalent since 2005.

John Himmelfarb’s style is most often characterized by calligraphic drawings and line-heavy painting. Through his vision, the angular nature of construction equipment is molded and expanded into work that is powerful, energetic, and jubilant. This theme is realized as rough, craggy and forceful construction vehicles in everything from cast iron, clay, wax model, etchings, prints, and paintings, illustrating his diverse abilities and the multitude of expression within an everyday motor vehicle.

Rather than presenting works in chronological order or sorting by medium, this book informatively curates the collection. For example, the acrylic paintings “Going Home” (2007), and “Crisis Management” (2008), printed on opposing pages, present the same frontal-cab view. However, whereas “Going Home” gives a leisurely sense of contented ambling, “Crisis Management” is markedly animated and agitated. The bumper in “Going Home” is replaced with an angry grill that convincingly portrays a mouth of sorts, teeth gritted in fury. The book culminates with a photograph of Himmelfarb’s current project, an actual truck with welded pipes and appendages entirely painted a strong and vibrant red. This life-size artwork is the actualization of his vision; the artist can move around and in his art. Like Pygmalion’s sculpture, the gods have smiled, the dream is realized, and the truck has come to life.

by Lilly Lampe