All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Campaign for Drawing

How many times have you heard someone say, "I wish I could draw" or "I can't draw anything"? You might even have said it about yourself. Banish the thought! An independent educational charity, the Campaign for Drawing, which promotes drawing as "a tool for thought, creativity, [and] social and cultural engagement", believes drawing is "a basic human skill useful in all walks of life" and available to everyone. 

Since its launch in 2000, the organization has been promoting drawing among professionals as well as the general public, not only throughout the United Kingdom where it is located but also abroad. Its activities to encourage awareness and appreciation of drawing's documented benefits include a professional development program, Power Drawing; training and support for educators; public policy advocacy; dissemination of research, case studies, and practice guidelines; partnerships with educational groups and corporations; and Big Draw events, including an annual month-long initiative in October in some 20 countries on five continents, that aim to create opportunities to connect the public through drawing with museums and galleries, educators, and artists. One such event, taking place in London on October 22 and 23, is the Big Draw Festival, which sponsors creative workshops with artists, architects, cartoonists, and other professionals. Another is Big Draw Self-Portrait Drawing Show, an exhibition and sale at Chapel Row Gallery in Bath of 50 original self-portraits, all donated to the Campaign for Drawing. Events throughout the United Kingdom are listed here. Events in Australia, China, Fiji, Hong Kong, Hungary, Portugal, the United States, and other non-UK locations are listed here. Check to determine if events are scheduled where you live. If there are none, consider organizing an event for next year's celebration of drawing.

The Campaign for Drawing's Drawing in Action site offers case studies of drawing activities and experiences created by museum educators, artists, and art teachers and documenting the purposes of drawing for learning, engagement, and enjoyment. 

Be sure to check the Resources section for publications, partnering organizations, and lists of online drawing activities.

Go here to learn more about the Campaign for Drawing's organization, history, funders, and patrons. Newsletters are archived here. Shop here. The organization is on FaceBook. And for fun, try out Draw and Fold Over.

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ In Roanoke, Virginia, the Taubman Museum of Art presents two exhibitions of note: "Jae Ko: Paper", on view until January 9, 2011, and "Jane Hammond: Fallen", which closes January 16, 2011. 

Korean-born Jae Ko is renowned for her remarkable paper sculptures consisting of tightly wound spools or rolls of paper soaked in water containing sumi ink or natural dyes. Her compelling work has been rewarded with many fellowships, including a prestigious Pollock-Krasner grant.

Jane Hammond, Fallen

Color Inkjet Print on Archival Paper, Cut

Matt Medium, Jade Glue, Sumi Ink

Additional Handwork in Acrylic Paint and Gouache

Fiberglass Strand, and Hand-Made Cotton Rag Paper

Jane Hammond's Fallen, when it was first shown in New York in 2005, consisted of more than 1,500 leaves, each memorializing an American soldier killed in the war in Iraq. Hammond started gathering leaves a year after the United States invaded Iraq. She digitally scans and prints each one and then manipulates the photograph to form a sculptural object whose perfected shape, color, and thickness represents the actual leaf. She continues to create and add new leaves each week and plans to continue to do so until the war ends. At the Taubman, the installation, presented on a 30-foot-long pedestal, now has more than 4,200 leaves. The wall text for the piece notes that "[e]ach handmade leaf is inscribed by the artist with the name of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq".

The Whitney Museum of American Art has acquired Fallen.

Go here for "Collecting Leaves, Assembling Memory: Jane Hammond's Fallen and the Function of War Memorials" in Smithsonian Archives of American Art Journal, 2008. (The pdf is six pages.)

✭ Continuing through November 13 at Woodward Gallery is "Knox Martin — Woman: Black and White Paintings". 

Colombia-born Knox Martin exhibits internationally and has won numerous awards and honors, including a Pollock-Krasner grant in 2008 and the National Academy of Design's Mary & Maxwell Desser Memorial Award and J. Sanford Saltus Medal for Painting in 2009. Go here to see images of Knox Martin's work at the gallery. 

Knox Martin Website

The Woodward Gallery is on New York City's Lower East Side.

✭ The inaugural exhibition for Charlotte, North Carolina's 145,000-square-foot Mint Museum Uptown is "New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection". Included in the show, which runs through April 17, 2011, are more than 60 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by Milton Avery, Jennifer Bartlett (In the Garden), Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam (Blowing), Elizabeth Murray (Split and Join), Edward Ruscha (Clockspeed), Frank Stella (Damascus Gate II), and other major post-war artists. 

A Charlotte Observer review of the show is here.

Jeanne Drevas, Trunk IV

White Pine Bark, Honeysuckle, Sweet Birch

29" h x 20" diameter

✭ The 6th Annual Artists of Rappahannock Studio & Gallery Tour is scheduled for November 6-7. This  art crawl through Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains features 15 open studios and eight galleries showing paintings, sculpture, pottery, glass work, ironwork, jewelry, textiles, and photography. I've taken the tour at least twice; it's a lot of fun and a great introduction to some of the region's best artists, including one of my favorites, Jeanne Drevas, who lives at the top of a mountain in Sperryville, Virginia, in a home she built herself.

Art Blogs and Other Art-Related Sites

Following are some art blogs or other art-related sites worth visiting:

✓ A nonprofit collective of professionals in contemporary art comprises the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), founded in 2002. The group's mission is to "create an open flow of information, support, and collaboration within our field and to develop a stronger sense of community among our constituency." The membership includes galleries, independent curators and other arts professionals, and established gallery directors. At the end of this month, NADA presents its First Annual NADA Artist Ball in New York. In December, NADA is sponsoring NADA Art Fair Miami Beach 2010. 

✓ At Art & Education more than 70,000 visual arts professionals and academics exchange information about contemporary art exhibitions, publications, symposia, and academic employment opportunities. The membership includes artists, writers, art historians, curators, and art teachers.

✓ Art for Tibet holds an annual charity event and art auction to benefit the nonprofit Students for a Free Tibet whose international headquarters are in New York. The event includes the work of many Tibetan contemporary artists. 

✓ Nature's Art offers a free downloadable file for making leaf carving art.

✓ The National Museum of African Art now lets you search and explore the museum's collections of paintings, prints, sculpture, textiles, and other media, as well as specific artists, makers, and cultures.