Parson's Son

Title

Parson's Son

Creator

Dennis Corrigan
American, b. 1944

Date

1972

Description

The eccentricity that has marked Dennis Corrigan’s work throughout his career can be traced to his childhood in Lakewood, New Jersey, when he and his schoolmates would stage drawing contests during class to see who could make the others laugh first. The skills he developed during such escapades were enough to secure entrance to the Philadelphia College of Art, where he majored in illustration. But it was the bizarre nature of his ongoing efforts that won him early dismissal from the Navy, which he had entered as an intelligence officer after receiving his B. F. A. in 1966. (Evidently a poster he had drawn for a children’s Christmas party had been deemed a bit too inappropriate.) Corrigan returned to Philadelphia in 1970 to pursue graduate work at Tyler School of Art, and well before earning his M. F. A. there (in 1972) he began to regularly fulfill illustration commissions from leading national publications. In 1992, after twenty years as an independent artist, he accepted a teaching position at Marywood University in Scranton, where he remains in residence.

The example of Parson’s Son on view here, like all of the prints in the edition, is essentially a photographic reproduction. The original graphite drawing, executed on frosted acetate, was photographed full size to produce a continuous tone negative. The negative was then contact printed onto a translucent sheet of Cronaflex, a sensitized polyester plastic manufactured by DuPont, to yield what amounts to, in photographic terms, a master positive that remains remarkably faithful to the original.

Contributor

Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University, Gift of the Class of 1975

Identifier

76.74

Rights

This image is posted publicly for non-profit educational uses, excluding printed publication. Other uses are not permitted.

Format

Cronaflex print; 12 x 8-1/2 in. (30.5 x 21.6 cm)