Worth far more than 1,000 words, the value of this portrait is in what it says about both its subject and its creator
Over 14 years, working with an ink pen on paper, Dr. Jim Chase used 22,719 words to create a portrait of Arnold Palmer. Each word took roughly 7.5 minutes to write, and each one had to be written with the steadiest of hands. That's why, every morning at 4am, Chase would walk around the local university track until exhausted, then shower and change clothes. After that, for as long as it took, he would lie on a bed in his studio until his heart rate was barely discernable. This accomplished, he would slide off the edge of the bed, walk slowly to the table and carefully put pen to paper.
"I had to use surface tension and gravity to get the ink out of the pen, so I would raise the pen's point about 1/100th of an inc and allow the ink to flow out over the surface," he says. "It took me seven strokes to make the capital letter 'B' at 1/10th of an inch. And after I would make an individual letter, I would have to move the entire 30x40-inch board slightly while at the same time maintaining my heart rate, then go back and make the next letter."
Inspiration
A communications professor at Pacific Union College in California, Chase says there were a number of factors that led him to create his incredible (if unconventional) portrait.
"The inspiration of Arnold Palmer's character was the genesis of the entire project. The fact that someone could be so impossibly kind and generous and thoughtful to his fans while at the same time performing impossible feats on the golf course was an amazing inspiration."
Using sports magazines from the 1950s and '60s, biographies and other sources, Chase compiled a "mammoth amount of research," which he collated, distilled and categorized. In the end, things Arnie saw became his eyes; what he heard, his ears; what he said, his lips, and so on.
The final work comprises an elegantly concise and precise biography of sorts that, in its many word, suggest so many more. For each word, name or quote, there's a lifetime of stories and memories from Palmer — and 14 years of Jim Chase.
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