At one time, Stuart Sherman was writing a great deal. To begin the process, he would open a book, choose a word and write. The initial word might be eliminated eventually, no longer needed, but the accumulated associations would have provided ample material for a story. He felt the use of a visual stimulus prevented preconceived notions about the work from hindering the flow of Ideas. In those days, he was also making abstract line drawings, word pictures, of everyday objects: a tree, sunlight, a waterfall. However, the two-dimensionality of the drawings and the writing began to give him the sense of increasing alienation from “animate” things. As a result, he now performs pieces that he considers visual abstract language about the relations between objects; he calls the work “Spectacles.”