Love House and Hutchins Forum displays 'Look Homeward, Angel'-inspired drawings

Thomas Wolfe’s novel “Look Homeward, Angel” has inspired images in the minds of many who have read its passages.

And for Douglas Gorsline, those images were put to paper, creating a series of pen-and-ink drawings for the first illustrated edition of the novel in the 1940s.

Now an exhibit of those prints is on display in the Love House and Hutchins Forum on East Franklin Street.

“It’s just interesting what Gorsline did with the text and how he conveyed the emotion in the novel,” said Reid Johnson, office assistant for the Center for the Study of the American South.

The drawings, which are first editions, are part of the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Library.

“I really enjoyed hanging the exhibit because of the quality of images and the range of images,” said Dana Di Maio, the assistant to the senior associate director of the center.

The drawings are grouped by themes, such as young life, family, Dixieland and college years.

Because the images are throughout the office hallways, the center has open gallery hours only on Thursdays from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The exhibit will run through Sept. 30.

Though the gallery has short hours, the images are interesting enough to draw visitors, organizers said.

Gorsline is an American artist whose work often draws from cubism and realism.

Di Maio said he enjoyed Gorsline’s use of shading, as the artist creates vivid scenes that play with shadow, such as the lighting of a cigarette.

“The emotions are shown so clearly. It’s been a pleasure to see them and enter this whole world of Eugene Gant,” he said.

“Look Homeward, Angel” is a semi-biographical account of Wolfe’s life through the character Eugene Gant. Wolfe lived in Asheville and attended UNC from 1916 to 1920.

“Thomas Wolfe is one of the major American literary figures in the first place and certainly a quintessential example of a Southern writer,” Johnson said.

Many people are familiar with the book and recall favorite scenes while looking at the works, he said.

And those who have not read the novel are often interested in reading after they see the emotion of the drawings, Johnson said.

The drawings cover everything from the serene, with scenes of Gant lying beneath a tree, to the humorous, including a drawing of a drunken night.

Di Maio said the drawings were interesting to place because there were so many that it gave them flexibility to group by theme.

The groups draw the viewer’s eye through the parlor, down the hall, through the conference room and down the hall again.

“You’re really surrounded everywhere you go in the Love House by these prints,” he said.


Contact the Arts Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.