Warm and Cold (portfolio, in collaboration with David Mamet)

Donald Sultan

A collaborative work by visual artist Donald Sultan and playwright David Mamet (born 1947). This large-format, portfolio, in its original blue linen clamshell box, is a vivid, minimalist meditation on solo travel in a winter landscape, touching on the themes of family, warmth, and memories. Its loose sheet format includes two mounted color photographs and nine large original lithographs.

Designed as a book for their daughters, Willa and Frances (whose mounted photographs appear at the beginning and end), this collaboration between playwright David Mamet and artist Donald Sultan describes the difficulty of fathers' commuting to work and leaving small children behind.

Mamet's poem, however, has also been read as "a grownup's attempt to recreate a childhood he never knew" (Thea Diamond). The poem is characteristically spare and Sultan's expressive lithographs are correspondingly simple. It is the first of two creative collaborations between the artists.