Yasmeen Abdallah Part 2 The following is a conversation I had with Yasmeen about her work, life, and influences, along with images of her new works. John: To get started, could you tell us something about your work and background as an artist, and if there’s any advice you could give young artists?…
Drawing Hoaxes In our current political environment, fundamental scientific truths are often called into question for political gain, through propaganda fueled by a biased media and the proliferation of journalistic sensationalism. The president says something that is blatantly untrue, and people believe it, despite the facts. When something false is repeated often enough, it…
Leslie Roberts – ‘Drawing Instructions” Leslie Roberts makes diagrammatic works that revel in the space between drawing and painting. They also excitingly explore the spaces between looking, seeing, and thinking (or decoding, problem solving, “figuring out”). Her works translate often serendipitously found texts into patterns. Within the parameters of each work exists every aspect…
When I first met Yasmeen Abdallah at Pratt Institute in the mid-2000’s, she was lugging gallon jugs of water from her thesis exhibition. Why she was doing this? Was it part of her work? A labor of the everyday that would result in an exquisitely tough piece of art? Or was she just cleaning up…
The Butterfly Effect was named in the 1960’s by Edward Lorenz. He used to describe how a very simple system could yield immensely greater effects in varyingly unpredictable ways. Lorenz described the details of a tornado: its form, its velocity, path, etc., as being influenced by exceedingly minor disturbances in the weather. As the story…
I first met Raha when we were in graduate school at Pratt Institute and have followed her work ever since. She works across and within many mediums (film, collage, painting, etc.), each informing the other and crossing into the other, yet her work in drawing has always been central to her practice. Raha’s drawings fuse…
One of my most vivid memories of drawing is from when I was five years old. I was on the cusp of kindergarten, and my mother took me to my future classroom to meet my teacher before school started. My teacher, Mrs. Eagen, gave me some paper and colored pencils. She asked me to draw…
Here’s a fun project that will allow you to explore new ways of understanding both the illusion of space, inexorably grappled with by artists throughout history, and the inherent flatness of your paper’s surface. These two ideas collide (or reach a peaceful harmony) below. And attempting to draw the impossible (something not visible) will allow…
At best, when I’m drawing clouds, I feel like I’m moving air vapor around, not just moving my pencil. – Barry Nemett on his work “View from Montecastello” I first met Barry when we both taught together several years ago. We had many conversations over the course of the semester and have since gotten to…
I was really close to my grandfather on my mother’s side and spent much of my youth with him and my grandmother, as my mother worked the late shift at the local hospital and they watched me and my brother every night. We also had dinner with them every weekend until I left for graduate…