Combing Columbus: Photogenic Drawings for the Bicentennial

by Mary Jo Bole

Sculptor, printmaker, and bookmaker Mary Jo Bole worked throughout the bicentennial year to create drawings for a commemorative book about Columbus. The artist’s delight in historical facts—and curiosities—has driven her extensive research in libraries and archives throughout the city where she unearthed historical images of Columbus ranging from the profound and moving to the absurd and hilarious. Bole has distilled a smorgasbord of material into 36 drawings published in a contemporary version of a commemorative tome: an artist’s book with images and notes on Columbus’s past and present filtered through Bole’s idiosyncratic vision of the city she calls home.

Here you will find, for example, a rendering of a Christopher Columbus cartoon character from the centennial celebration soaking his sore feet surrounded by her tops picks of Doo Dah revellers. Did you know that there was an infestation of squirrels that brought about the Great Squirrel Hunt of 1822—followed in 1903 by the construction of a “miniature residence for the state house squirrels…placed in position on the Broad St. side of the lawn?” All this and much more awaits us between the covers of Combing Columbus.

Price: $30 (customer pick-up)

Price: $35 (includes shipping)