Avidly Seeking Drawing Maxims???

A storehouse awaits at http://quote.robertgenn.com/getquotes.php?catid=84&numcats=347 - one of 350+ categories of art quotations and observations maintained by Robert Genn, of the Painters Keys website. I have noticed some double attributions - could Balthus and Degas both have said, "One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil"? For that matter, I say that at least once a semester, could I get some credit as well? But seriously, the Genn collection is exhaustive, and great for inducing a quick "ah!"

Genn also is the force behind a twice-weekly email that often hits the nail on the studio head - http://clicks.robertgenn.com/ for archives and free subscription.

Drawing Conferences Abound!

In London, or plan to be there next week? Excellent. The Campaign for Drawing and the Drawing Research Network are co-hosting "Thinking Through Drawing," a one-day conference on October 8 featuring a series of talks by practitioners in the forefront of contemporary drawing. Please visit www.simcoe.co.uk/drawing/news.htm for full schedule and registration information.

And given that you're already in a conference mood, you will no doubt be wanting to also spend time at the Campaign for Drawing's international gathering, "Drawing for Learning, Engagement and Enjoyment". Held October 7 - 11, the conference schedule is packed with opportunities for discourse, pedagogy, and practice, including The Big Draw (longer post on TBD to follow).

"Writing on Drawing" Book Review on Artmatters.info

So, yes, this review is a wee bit dated, but I was thrilled to come across http://www.artmatters.info/, an art website based out of Nairobi. As a long-time adopted Capetonian, it was wonderful to see beyond the borders of ZA, and get a glimpse of Kenyan online art activity.

A book review of "Writing on Drawing" that weaves in the Kenyan perspective appears at:
http://artmatters.info/?p=1264

Arkansas Art Center

If you're looking for a small but diverse collection of drawings online to use as a classroom reference or simply to flip through for personal pleasure, the Arkansas Art Center has a compact but well-presented online resource. Spanning the 17th through 20th centuries, it is an excellent survey of works on paper.

Show Your Work

This may be basic information for most, but I have had several students ask recently how to go about exhibiting their work. Here are some good (free) listings of exhibition opportunities.

College Art Association:
http://www.collegeart.org/opportunities/type/3/

New York Foundation for the Arts:
http://www.nyfa.org/opportunities.asp?type=Opportunity&opp=OppArtist&id=95&fid=1&sid=54

Las Vegas Arts Commission:
http://www.lvartscommission.com/artist-opportunities/

Rhizome.org:
http://www.rhizome.org/

Chicago Artists Resource:
http://www.chicagoartistsresource.org/visual-arts

Scaling Up the Dream Mark

This is short, as the demon pneumonia has my attention (hack), but I wanted to link to the work of Matt Woodward, recently featured on spillspace.com. Woodward's scale is the one I am finding most intimate right now, as I'm looking at new drawings and how they're performed on the page. By intimate, I don't mean small, or precious, but inviting and enveloping. The drawings themselves are larger than life, but they feel like a whispered secret told by the body.

Classic Cinema! The Dot and the Line

Thanks to Amanda W for sending this Academy Award-winning animation by Chuck Jones (1965), based on the book by Norton Juster (1963). I still feel sorry for the squiggle - he's just a hep cat doin' his thing.

Mass Gesture

For the last two days, I've been coordinating a collaborative drawing project at Clemson University. Over 140 people participated in the making of the piece, which was framed as an experiment in accumulated gesture. Measuring 10x24 feet, the piece started with a texture rubbing of rice grains plus whatever people had in their pockets - change, keys, vitamins, headphones. The page was divided in half, and the two sides were developed very differently, each obeying a very separate logic of practice (one very formally controlled and systematic, the other driven by play and inventional gaming). The final act was to unify the entire piece in terms of both material and compositional flow.

Social metaphors emerged by the handful. The dyadic formal division was too extreme to be sustained if it were to remain one piece, so compromise was required. That took the form of a tenuous bipartisan drawing effort that was quickly buried by sea of heavier marks that indeed unified the piece but rendered it less nuanced. Tradeoffs occurred. Not everyone was pleased. Levels of personal investment and ownership varied radically, and the marks were an index of engagement. Moments of consensus were frequently reached, but then practice didn't necessarily follow from agreed-upon intention. Numerous parallels to the health care debate were drawn, in addition to thousands of marks. Many people drew big for the first time and loved it. It was a very good day.

Mouse Marks

www.odosketch.com is one of many online (etch-a-)sketch sites, but its pleasing palette and array of simple tools kept me happy for longer than the usual sixty seconds. It may be that because the palette is relatively limited, it makes for an interesting gallery collection of completed works - given the same few tools, what is the range of possibility? Clearly, reasonably vast.

Leaving the Trace

The temptation for a text-free post here is high, so I will partially indulge. Visit Lightmark. There is also strong temptation for puns involving a light-handed touch. No.