(#194) WHITE OAK

Edition of 124 of which 15 copies are signed, 1-15, and 10copies are signed as Artist's Proofs. There are no progressives and nodedication copies.

May 20, 2002 12 colors (9 by lithography, 3 by letterpress) 18" x 24"

Client: Dave Bing, White Oak Landscape, Inc., 5552 La Ribera Street, Livermore CA 94550. (Dave and Robert Bing are twin brothers and business partners in White Oak Landscape. The image reflects their relationship.)

1 - 15: Dave Bing Artist's Proofs: Saint Hieronymus Press

The Sun rises every morning, and proceeds across Heaven and down again into darkness. The Sun's rising and setting seem to us mortals to be a big, important job, but really, it's the same thing every day, day in and day out. Rolling the Sun around is the endless labor of Sisyphus. It never ends.

Most of life's tasks are repetitious and essentially meaningless. Preventive maintenance, tidying so that in the event of need you can lay your hands on a tool or weapon in a hurry. Maintaining equipment, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, doing the dishes, washing the car. Looked at the wrong way it's Sisyphus endlessly pushing the rock only to see it slip from his desperate grasp and avalanche back down to the starting place.

But what would happen to Sisyphus if he were, quite without warning, one day to reach the apex and see the rock tumble over the edge, freeing him from his task? What else would he do? Suddenly, Sisyphus out of a job, looking at first elated then puzzled at the receding boulder, his task at last complete. It would be like getting out of jail with no one to meet you, nowhere to go. Suddenly all you had yearned for, dreamed of, desired would be nothing more than a life with no goals, no focus, no meaning. You might even be tempted to commit another crime so that you could get back in again, to rediscover the desire for freedom which, once granted, was worse than any prison. To be freed from all responsibility, to find the burdens of your day lifted from your shoulders and onto the shoulders of others--no more laundry, yard work, dishes that have to be washed after every meal, no more changing the sheets, no more having to work in order to pay the mortgage in order to have a house that owns you far more than you own it. This would be a sort of Hell, this lack of all responsibility, this loss of the Sisyphean aspect of life.

That Sisyphus is one lucky guy.