• Wanda Gag, rhymes with jog, seemed to create illustrations and fine art, know for her lithographs, that never had true straight lines. As a child, when I first read Millions of Cats, her illustrations seemed to ooze over the paper like rich pancake batter. I ran into this print on the internet today with no title The jpg was listed as "mia_38854e.jpg." A little detective work lead me to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The title is Stone Crusher. It is a subject that would usually be treated with harsh, crisp lines to emphasize the mechanical power of the machine. Gag chose to see the machine as organic - a dinosaur. I wonder if she believed that all things have a spirit and life. I also wonder if the machine simply looked like a creature to her or did she see it that way because it was a monster crushing the environment or was it an obsolete piece of machinery and, therefore, a dinosaur?

Take a close look at another one of her prints. This one is from San Francisco's Achenback Foundation for the Graphic Arts collection. It is enjoyable to search over the lush litho crayon image, looking for those nonexistent straight lines. Every object seems to have life and a glow. It may take a child's view of the world to see the potential for existence in all things.