Photo: Jody Dole; Courtesy Star of Hope Foundation, Vinalhaven, Maine

Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

In his journal entry for February 1, 1962, Indiana records that it was "another cold, sub-freezing, snow-flurried day," and that he went uptown to see proofs of black and white photographs of his work. He writes that "some were good; others fair," and that he went ahead and ordered blowups so that art critic Gene Swenson would have images to choose from for an article he was planning on writing (the article, "The New American ‘Sign Painters’," was eventually published in the September 1962 issue of ARTnews). He then walked to the Museum of Art to see his painting The American Dream, I, which was part of Recent Acquisitions: Painting and Sculpture, and which was "hanging crooked again."

Indiana records that he took a taxi to Grand Central Station (to catch a train to Scarsdale, where he taught art classes at the Scarsdale Studio Workshop), and that his objective there was to finish a collage mural of Manhattan. Once back in New York City he was met by J. (his partner, fashion designer John Kloss), who had photographs of his construction Pumpkin, taken by Bill Kennedy. Indiana notes that he took a nap upon getting home, and that journalist and art historian Noel Frackman dropped by with an Eat drawing of his for him to sign.