In 1961, Lee Bontecou began making works utilizing discarded parts of conveyor belts found in the alley next to her East Village apartment building. She sewed together the parts along with pieces of soiled canvas and wire to create “paintings” that hang on the wall, but also protrude with gaping chasms that create vortices of devouring space (see below). The circular forms might be read as open mouths, airplane engines, or natural crater formations seen from high in the air. At the same time the artist produced drawings, not necessarily as sketches to guide her sculptures, but as independent works that echo the same mysterious structures. In the BMA drawing, three rings of descending space hover on the large sheet. Perhaps it was the turmoil of this year marked by the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the building of the Berlin Wall, and the beginning of the Vietnam conflict that led the artist to write that she wanted to “glimpse some of the fear, hope, beauty, and mystery that exist in us all.” With all that we have learned about black holes and the ever-expanding universe, these works continue to speak to the mysteries of our existence in time and space.