Alan Glass's early drawings have the appearance of smoke spiraling into solid form, of stone coming to life and metamorphosing, of plants and animals combining. Beginning in 1954, Glass availed himself of the newly invented ballpoint pen to create extraordinarily intricate and detailed images.

Using variations in pressure and density, he conjured forms that were sometimes lush and thick, sometimes light and piled up. Here, inert matter came to life and rocks transformed into plants or avian creatures. At times he used such an abundance of ballpoint pen that the drawings took on almost the texture of paintings. In these works, the thin paper was soaked in shades of deep blue, in keeping with Glass's recurrent use of lapis lazuli, aquamarine, and other brilliant shades of blue in his art. The several hundred ballpoint pen drawings he made in the 1950s and early 1960s seem to be the seeds from which his later, better-known assemblages and paintings emerged. -Kristoffer Noheden