First published: September 2025
For over 50 years, an Erie artist has filled sketchbooks with stream-of-consciousness drawings – now these visual diaries are at the heart of a show in his hometown
“Drawing from Within: the Sketchbooks of Frank Novel” reveals 60 or so paper and large banner enlargements from dozens of the artist’s sketchbooks dating back to the 1970s. In the exhibition’s entrance at the Erie Art Museum in Pennsylvania is a large table where, at unscheduled times, one might meet Frank Novel. At first, he may seem engrossed with drawing in his current sketchbook, but he is happy to look up from his wheelchair and talk to visitors. In recent years, the long-term side-effects of psychotropic medications have left Novel (pronounced Nóvel), previously an inveterate walker, with an unsteady, shuffling gait. He lives as an outpatient in a high-rise apartment building off Erie’s central downtown street, half a mile from where it ends at the Lake Erie shoreline.
Untitled, 2003, marker on paper, photo: Fred Scruton
By FRED SCRUTON
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision 124.
