Solon H. Borglum, born Ogden, UT - Avenue - n.d. - T-Shirt

A graphite pencil sketch of an empty street, with a row of tall utility poles receding across a cream sheet and a small wooden building at the left edge.

Visual Elements & Composition

Cream paper dominates the design, roughly three-quarters of the sheet, and the drawing is built almost entirely from graphite grey and lighter grey strokes. Several thin verticals rise along the roadway, and one pole sits close in the right foreground beside a pair of curved tracks or ruts, pulling the eye down the street. A low wooden building with a pitched roof anchors the left side, and a single small figure stands near the poles. The lower edge is shaded with loose horizontal strokes, while the right side of the sheet is left blank, so the composition breathes rather than fills.

Meaning & Symbolism

The telegraph and utility poles mark the spread of wires into small communities, and their repeated verticals give the sketch its structure. Solon Borglum (1868-1922) was born in Ogden, Utah, and became known chiefly as a sculptor of animals and frontier subjects, working largely in bronze. He trained in Paris and was the brother of the sculptor Gutzon Borglum. This drawing records an ordinary street as it was observed, a quiet and unstaged moment, and shows the observational side of his practice beneath the monumental work he is better known for.

Wearing the Street

A street scene suits a tee because it is read at close range and in motion, as the shirt moves with the wearer. The poles and the single figure sit across the chest and shoulders, so the empty road feels like a passing view glimpsed on the way somewhere. The blank right side of the sheet lets the open shirt carry the quiet, unhurried mood of the drawing.