Rediscovering Nancy Drew

27. Drawing on a Sleuth: The Case of the Nancy Drew Series

Drawing on a Sleuth: The Case of the Nancy Drew Series Laura Ruby ri\ My Nancy Drew Series of artworks is concerned with the nature ~~ of detection, with the ways we see and the ways in which we solve puzzles. Also, this series is concerned with the nature of artmaking , how we depict the world, how we create shorthand visual notation systems to understand and to organize the world, and how we "read" or investigate an artwork. The series incorporates a range of art-making conventions and codes from diverse historical times and cultures, as situated in the context oflate twentieth century American popular culture. The imagery of my Nancy Drew Series is visual and encourages visual as well as mental reflection. Though other senses are engaged in the Nancy Drew books and other detective fiction, the world of the film detective-of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and Jessica Fletcher ofMurder, She Wrote-is visually dominant. Light informs our visible world. Our eyes "look" and relay perceptual signals to our "seeing" brains. This interpretive brain activity is investigative-clues are gathered, particulars recorded, patterns tried and discarded, and new patterns formed and conclusions reached. In the highest order of brain decoding we recognize faces. Most of the time we recognize friends on the street, after adding up all the visible particulars of a face. But occasionally we might see a three-quarter view or less of a face, jump to conclusions, and embarrassingly misidentify a stranger. There has been a misinterpretation 226 DRAWING ON A SLEUTH The Sign ofthe Twisted Candles 227 of the clues, or possibly a deception (as when a person in hat and coat walks out a front door under surveillance, while the real target goes out the back door). Those raw bits of "fact" or evidence are out there for us to discover ; we can identify them as signs of something else, something 228 TRANSFORMING NANCY DREW The Quest ofthe Missing Map more complex, or we might pass by them unaware. Detection is about heightening awareness, that sense of discovery and that capacity to solve puzzles. We may pick up clues without any purpose and only after the fact discover that those clues lead somewhere. In Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup, for example, a still photographer is completely unaware that he has captured a murder on film until the murderers try to steal his negatives. Nancy Drew and other detectives, like the photographer in Blowup, after getting a lead pursue many avenues to solve a mystery . Like their counterparts, researchers engaging in scientific inquiry , detectives are excited when exploring new territory; they resolutely test established knowledge and hope to find order. In my Nancy Drew Series I often depict detective tools. These devices are employed as extensions of the senses-in particular the visual sense. Nancy Drew turns a flashlight onto the dark mysteries of the world and uses a magnifying glass, binoculars, and telescope among other visual enhancers-just as scientists may employ more DRAWING ON A SLEUTH 229 sophisticated tools such as the electron microscope, spectrometer, or infrared telescope. These are the tools of the inquisitive empiricist, and they represent active engagement in the physical world on the part of the detective or scientist or artist. My Nancy Drew Series is situated in the popular culture of the late twentieth century. This particular context draws on the cultural artifacts and conventions of earlier popular culture of this century. Just as idiomatic speech is made up of constituent elements, the meaning ofwhich cannot be derived literally, my visual artworks are a pastiche or admixture of constituent elements that are made up of visual and verbal languages, dialects and styles particular to American cultural life. An example of an American popular idiom used for private coding would be American World War II POWs who spoke in baseball slang to confound their captors. As I create artworks I continue to explore the correspondences between involved detection and committed art-making. lowe a great deal to the books themselves. Nancy Drew represents a sense of conThe Bungalow Mystery 230 TRANSFORMING NANCY DREW fident independence, active engagement with the world around her, curiosity and desire to put ideas together and to draw conclusions. The books are well researched. My individual artworks grow from an appreciation for the historical research into such areas as Chinese...