ART YARD Advanced Studio Senior Curators Kevin Anderson, Evelyn Beliveau, Vera Tineo, Fatima Traore, and Quentin Williamston met this week on Zoom to consider and review artists from the Kentler Flat Files for inclusion in our upcoming exhibition In Reflection. The team presented 66 artists from the Kentler Flat Files and narrowed the exhibition down to 13 artists.
The next phase of their curatorial work includes making selections for the exhibition, writing letters and a curatorial essay, conducting interviews and that sort of thing. It is shaping up to be an impressive exhibition with a lovely poetic vision!!
This week in ART YARD Advanced Studio on Zoom Teaching Artist Rachael Wren developed a session on blind contour and contour line drawings.
Rachael explained to the group: “Contour line is a slow, concentrated method of drawing, looking for all the particulars of the object, person, or space you are depicting. Begin by resting your eye on one point of the object you are drawing, and imagine that your pencil is in touch with that point. As your eyes move along the object, move your pencil along the paper, capturing all the little details, creases, twists, and turns that you see. Try to not lift your hand from the paper as you draw.”
We made 3 pairs of blind contour and contour line drawings – a shoe, a portrait of someone from the Zoom session and our rooms. For each pair, we first did a blind contour drawing and then a regular contour line drawing of the same thing.
Blind contour means that you do not look at your paper while you are drawing. When working with blind contour, one doesn’t worry about inevitable distortions or about making a “good drawing.” It is an exercise of concentrated looking. Blind contour drawings are challenging but is really interesting to see how that time spent looking influences the contour line drawing made afterwards.
This week’s ART YARD CREATE topic is unexpected challenges. We posed the questions: What are your stories of unexpected challenges? How did you work through the situation? What kept you focused? How did things turn out in the end? In particular, how did your art making feature in the challenge, action or result?
My example to kick off the thread is my own art related unexpected challenge from a museum in Greece!
I encourage you to jump into the thread with your own stories, art, photographs and even videos!
We are excited to announce that many of the ART YARD Teaching Artists with work in the exhibition In Reflection at St. Joseph’s College Alumni will be participating in an artist’s talk on Zoom on Thurs, May 14th from 12:30 - 1:30 pm.
Join us for this event at Zoom Meeting https://sjcny.zoom.us/j/99958032415
We have raised over 80% of GoFundMe campaign to support ART YARD Virtual Programs. We are so grateful for the support!
I hope you are hanging in there, healthy in body and spirit!
