“Pettus is an artist of unusual breadth and seriousness. Known since the 1970s as a painter, he had started in the 1960s making ceramics of such beauty that they could have made him famous—if he hadn’t changed directions. And before that, he had created a powerful body of photographs in the sober black-and-white idiom of Strand and Evans. From the beginning Pettus has kept a skeptical eye on the New York art struggles and remained a noncombatant. “An aging member of a devout monastic sect,” he calls himself, ‘still praying and singing the old Gregorian chants long after the original faith has eroded away to a shadow.” In his text, which plays counterpoint to the illustrations, Pettus describes this “original faith” vividly and fervently. It is in pointed contrast to the triviality of the art world he has been observing. Art has deep purposes, he writes. It can’t be understood without grasping its makers’ intentions. Its power to contain opposites, to embody “not only” and “but also,” and thus open our minds. Pettus’s art does that, and so does his penetrating commentary.”