Person became such a prolific and compulsive creator that when he was hospitalized for lung disease in 1982 and had no access to his tools and wood, he began to draw with crayons on paper and cardboard. After infirmities stole the strength he needed to carve, he increasingly concentrated on his drawing. Although he did not live long enough to produce a body of works on paper comparable in quantity to his carvings, the extant drawings often masterfully manipulate line and color—two qualities that survived and prospered from his transition to drawing. Other emphases of his carvings lived on in these drawings' added refinement of his love of calligraphy. In the works on paper, Person most fully demonstrates the connections between his writing system and the quilt aesthetic. The flow from writing to quilt—or quilt to writing—is often patent. In several cases, quilters' motifs arrive unaltered in Person's drawings, such as when he included the quilt pattern known as "the box" in an untitled drawing.
