Pandemic Dialogues

Lockdown: Artists in Conversation

AVANTIKA BAWA

Jeanine Riedl

When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?

I have always drawn, as far back as I can recall! The immediacy of this very intuitive act and the gratification of an instant mark is what makes drawing so ubiquitous, accessible and fresh. This is what excites me about drawing.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing?

Mastery and skill are both a bit odd but important concepts to understanding the history of art and also contemporary art. I prefer the term skill. It is pretty straight forward as it suggests that a skillful individual can draw well, or rather, realistically. Mastery, however, suggests that a person not only draws with skill but also makes powerful work that has impact.I don’t always trust the people or trends that would assign the latter idea a stamp of approval. All this aside, I have deep respect for anyone who can draw with skill and precision. That said, if an artist relies on just skill while making, I get bored quickly.

What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?

Ouch, that’s a hard one! I think almost any mark made with enthusiasm, sincerity, seriousness, or with a sense of play, is a good one.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
Process is important to me, but I do not want it to be of any consequence or consideration to my audience. I think the drawings should speak for themselves.
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
Both large scale works’ and smaller intimate drawing gestures have a beauty to them. When I draw, the action essentially proceeds from a small intuitive response, much like a sketch, to one that is bold and deliberate, yet simple. Retaining the freshness of this intuitive gesture is very important, especially as the scale increases. Often my drawings resonate a sense of deliberate and determined mark-making, which is countered by a sense of play and experimentation.

Thus for me, the back and forth between smaller and larger drawings is a large part of my process that allows for this dance between the planned and unplanned.
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
It’s really up to them! I make the work and they can experience it how they wish. Anytime my works can keep my audience engaged and wondering without giving straight forward cues that generate didactic responses, I am happy!My work is often described as ‘deceptively simple’. At first glance it may appear straight forward but on closer observation you notice other nuances within the compositions of a series, such as subtle shifts in color, value and texture, and linear perspective measurements that don’t quite line up. I aim to make perfect distortions!

What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beermat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?These are precious. I like seeing these from other artists as they reveal more about their thinking and physical process than the final work. Are these art? Perhaps! A lot of it would depend on if the artist would want to present them as such.

The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?

While Manga and graffiti are both dynamic and beautiful and have shaped so much of our contemporary culture, its tiring to see so many younger folks blindly mimicking them. As an educator, I see this a lot, and it is tiring and boring.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).

Wet and dry? I don’t know how to respond to this since the line (pun intended!) has become more and more blurry to me. I personally use paint in my drawings but still feel more comfortable referring to them as drawings, or in some cases ‘works on panel.’Painting has a rich and more defined history and set of cannons to it. Drawing is a bit more loose and open to interpretation, so I’d rather be in this D league!
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?

Not at all! Think of all the amazing drawings that embrace mark-making, rendering and flatness.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?Emptiness is powerful. The void creates a space for rest and contemplation in my work while also generating an appetite to see more. Unlike the western concept of ‘’Horror Vacui’, I lean more towards welcoming this emptiness.

Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?It is not. The only participation occurs when my viewers observer the work or when someone helps with its framing or installation.

Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
At the early stages of ones art education, it is important that students learn to observe and accurately draw what they see through ‘sighting and measuring’, and an understanding and execution of rendering and mark-making. Once they have grasped this, then the can and should do whatever they want. This is my teaching philosophy.

One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to the Covid-19 crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being a!ected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials?

Since not everyone can access their studio easily, many artists have converted domestic spaces into studios. I had to do that for a short time but am now fortunate enough to be able to work in my studio in Vancouver, WA. Here I can work on a larger scale and be messy without worry.I had several shows and site-based installations lined up to occur from March through December 2020 that are now indefinitely postponed.

While this is all very sad, it is completely understandable. It has pushed me to make work without thinking about the pressure of a show or audience. Perhaps no one will ever see the series of drawings I am working on beside maybe a digital image of it. I guess that’s just fine!

Conceptually, I tried to embrace the repetition and monotony of the days (especially during the lockdown) by making drawings of the exact same building over and over and over again. And then more!Permutations of a single idea, by making slight shifts in composition, color, value and texture, is now the core query of my practice.

From Jeanine
QAs I was looking at your work, which is so beautiful, I began to think about the concept of place. How a place—spot or location, or even a position on paper—is given greater meaning or significance through the simplest addition of color, line, shape and form.

These colors, lines, and shapes take up space and become identifiable, remaining in a position—somewhere. For instance, while I see the salt desert in India as a landscape, it becomes a place, a distinct location, with the introduction of scaffolding, A Pink Scaffold in the Rann. It achieves greater meaning and attention and a sense of specific location through the presence of scaffolding. Architects build upon landscapes and create locations that the greater public, as well as other artists attach meaning and location to, such as 432 Park Avenue in New York City.

Would you say your drawings and structures are similar to what architects do –– in pursuit of purpose and claiming a space, and making space habitable –– or are you mimicking (subverting?) the architect’s pursuit, by artistic means in order to make us question if ‘space’, or ‘any space’ can ever be owned or claimed by anyone? And something like Covid truly shows us how transitory things are.
This is a very observant and good question and had me rethinking what I thought I felt strongly about in the past, and that is a desire to subvert perfection.

Till a few years ago when planning an installation, I’d look for environments with an unusual history. Often I found sites that appeared overly slick and responded by subverting this perfection. The work (at the time) would either be pure intervention, or a noninvasive dialogue with the location. Occasionally they became autonomous and self-contained, assigning the site to its past.Most recently though, while working on installations, or individual drawings within projects, I prefer straddling the space between mimicking and questioning structures and spaces, and in other instances simply appreciating them for what they are. The mimicry is almost always meant to be endearing and not an attack.

DANIELA EHEMANN

When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?

I started drawing as i was a kid. My dad showed me how to draw. I loved it and that’s when it started. I decided to study art as I was 14.

What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
Craftsmanship or outstanding performance this is how mastery is defined. The drawing has long strolled beyond the purely handcrafted, masterful. Nowadays, drawing is to be understood as an independent art form that no longer has its place as a forerunner e.g. has for painting, as it represents a template that is later reworked in color and painted over, but it stands independently and self-confidently next to painting, video sculpture and the like. s. w.

What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?

In general, I find evaluations difficult if I assume that, as Beuys said, everyone is an artist. For me there is no such thing as good and bad as an assessment of art.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
A nice question, the process is the path my drawing goes piece by piece on the white sheet of paper.

The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter? What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
…stunningly impressive 🙂

What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
a lot… Cy Twombly didn’t become a famous artist for nothing.

The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?

That may be, but as a lecturer at the university I have to say that it does not exclude the interest in experimental work. Just last week the master’s students developed an audio drawing for me that refers to the sound legends by R. Murray Schaffer and is not necessarily to be understood as a classic drawing.
9)How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’.

Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?

My work shows up, both on the sheet of paper and in space as an outline that is only filled in selected places. That means the emptiness is an important element in my work. However, I don’t understand this as emptiness in the conventional sense. For me, emptiness is space. An “empty area” and thus also an area that I understand two- and three-dimensional as a dialogue partner to the line on paper and in space.

Both sides are important to me. I am just as interested in intimacy as it is so beautifully described here as I am interested in drawing e.g. to combine with a performance and thus e.g. to develop a social or participatory togetherness.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
My current teaching experience shows that there are numerous other options. Drawing serves as a research tool, as a form of language to e.g. To illustrate ideas directly on the construction site Drawing means searching and finding. Grasping and grasping form Drawing is used to train perception and helps to execute ideas Drawing helps intuition to use it, as it can be used immediately (intuitive idea visualization) And it is the starting point for thinking A technical application alone will not do it justice.

One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?

Covid 19 and the reaction of artists and art to it is an extensive question that I can only partially answer. What I was able to observe in my own environment was that what I associate with the cultural work of art, to show oneself and to be viewed, was massively restricted. There were hardly any openings at the beginning of the first lockdown.
Then the resourceful artist or the resourceful gallery found ways to make art accessible to the public at a distance. That was in the summer. Even the art fair took place in Berlin. Nevertheless, it is a massive cut in cultural life itself when only 4 people are allowed to be in a gallery room … the conversation about what is to be seen, the standing together in front of the work of art, the social togetherness is gone and with it the discussion about art, the exchange, the making of new contacts and new possibilities.

Art and its presentations are not created on paper or, as with Spitzweg, in the quiet “little room”. Art is alive and if its air is taken away by the restrictions, it hardly gets any air. In this respect, of course, it also has an impact on my artistic work. Right now, a performance planned by me and my performance partner in November in Holland became impossible for the reasons mentioned. Working at home or in the studio, the so-called “home office” is nothing new for me as an artist. I love and know the withdrawal from the outside world as a necessity and a gain.

In relation to Covid 19, this was nothing new and compared to other professions, as an artist, I was able to continue to do my studio work, which despite the circumstances was something I feel grateful for. Are artists starting to make smaller objects and projects out of simpler materials? Surely artists will find their way and that might be one of them But I also think that artists are free spirits, free spirits who are always looking for new ways. As curious as I am, they will find a way to not “only” stay small, but big again.

DANIEL HARTLAUB

When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?

I started when I was a small child and, with some breaks, I continued ever since. So yes, I guess I was naturally attracted to the medium. But I guess all children are. But then its a question of sticking to it. Also, there are plenty of artists in my family, so growing up with their pictures on our walls did help here.

What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing?

I guess us humans tend to over-do anything we do. So I think it was the same with the traditional notion of having to learn how to draw first before you can draw. This notion made the whole art/technic often complicated or it took the fun out of it and the spontaneity. Technic became more important then content. But wanting to change this become more and more important, which of course was a good thing to happen. But today it seems like there are a lot of draughsman/woman who come out of school not knowing anything about technic but only about content- again it seems we are overdoing it.

For me you have to find a good balance (like with almost everything in life), not letting yourself be taken over by either, which I am still struggling with and probably always will. But this might actually be the key to becoming a good draughtsman or to be able to express what you really want to say with your work.

What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?

I have no idea. I guess it always depends on the viewers taste. There isn ́t a universal canon.But then I guess one can say technically this or that is objectively a good drawing cause it resembles a certain person or the juxtaposition of a figure is rendered correctly etc.But if this is the case we might not talk about drawings as a form of art (or are we?) but of drawing something with the aim of showing it realistically (like with the traditional scientific drawings(illustrations of animals/insects).

The- very old- question here would be “what is art” or “when does, in this case, a drawing becomes art?”
I guess we are actually all artists in one way or another. But some of us obviously have more talent. So if this is true you have your answer to what a bad drawing might be….

How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?

Very important. Usually I have one object/subject/thing/person/whatever in mind I want to draw and then, while drawing it, the next (idea) comes to mind. And so on. The only thing which is usually quite clear before I start is the mood or atmosphere I want to show or express with the drawing.

The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?

For some time now I have been drawing digitally on an i-Pad. So the “original” drawing is either the electronic rendering of the drawing on a screen or its projection on a wall or the print-out of it. The reason why I started drawing digitally was cause while working on a new exhibition which was made out of these huge (analogue) 4 x 6 meters charcoal on canvas drawings I developed a rush on my entire body (the charcoal, which I use a lot of, went through all my cloths on to my skin making me look like a coal miner at the end of another working day in my studio). So switching to digital drawing made my rush go away
but it made me work on the rather small screen of my tablet. Which means I am actually drawing on a more or less A4 sized screen while trying to keep in mind how the image might look like printed out on a huge/big sized paper. Its a totally different process and actually quite mind bending. Being able to zoom-in onto every detail of my drawing (and thus enlarging it/making it bigger) gives the whole thing another dimension which does no exist drawing analogue.

Having said all this I think the reason why I draw big is because, with my drawings I am aiming to create a certain atmosphere, in an cinematic way, almost like a backdrop of some (un-) written story. The viewer of my drawings become part of this scenery, almost like an immersive experience, like actors in a film. At the end of the day I am actually also a filmmaker, so I am always thinking in a narrative kind of way about my work and Projects.

What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
As already mentioned above I ́d like them to be part of it. I also always trying to tell a story with my drawings, which has to do with the place/location of where the exhibition takes place. Very often the history of the place, building and/or its location inspire me to the story I want to tell with my drawings.

What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beermat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
In rare and fortunate occasions they can be art, or worth showing to other people. But in an exhibition context, I believe we very often tend to over value everything done by an artists (especially with the famous ones), giving it almost an iconic or holy significants.

The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?

In general I think it ́s good. I am more of a figurative guy aa well and since early childhood, heavily influenced by comics and other pop culture medias so I can relate to it a lot.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse)
I am going with matisse here. Also when you work with charcoal, either digital or analogue one, you use your hands/fingers a lot, which gives you that “liquidy” greasy feeling while working, which is, I guess, usually associated more with “painting”.

In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?

No, not necessarily. I for instance use plains and space a lot to define content.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’.

Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?

Absolutely, I ́d even say my work needs emptiness, without it I wouldn’t know what to draw. This is why I usually cant draw on a white sheet of paper. For me everything is “on there” already, which makes sense since the “colour” white is, physical speaking, the combination of all colours. So I “blacken out” the whole paper before I start drawing my lines and plains which develop into objects, people etc and thus I bring light into the darkness (which, although it might sound quite dramatic, is usually my answer to people who find my drawings to “dark”).
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?

Well, I have no idea really. But I think either way, if drawing (or any form of art) becomes too conscious about or of itself, of what and why its doing or aiming for something or wants to “be” something it doesn’t really work anymore. If you call yourself e.g. “a political” or “a social” or “a personal” artist you are kind of limiting yourself to a certain theme or subject. I think an artists work should be about reality, how he/she conceives reality and maybe to show and make other people aware of certain things within “our” reality. These things can be bad or good, political, personal or social, beautiful, scary or…boring.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
Well, mind you but my German drawing teacher was sooo technical…unbearable technical!

Having said this doesn’t mean I am against learning technic. But, like with most things there are different approaches to teach drawing technics and some of them can be actually quite fun. Throughout my years as an art/drawing teacher I had students who wanted me to teach them technics and others didn’t. So whenever this was possible within the constrains of the course I tried to teach them individually
And coming back to my german teacher: his technical approach did apparently for some at least made sense and they learned a lot of out it and for some it didn ́t and they might have been better off learning something or focusing on something else. But in any case for anyone in the class it would have been better if he would have been a better teacher.
So I think the problem here is more the standardization of how to teach art in art schools and how good or bad the teaching/the teachers are…

Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
Of course it does. Since the crises started I feel totally lost when it comes to new ideas and projects. I think the problem here is that my work very often seems to or tends to be about scenarios like the one we are all experiencing right now. My work very often is dystopian, seemingly playing in some kind of a or our future or a parallel reality. But now the present seems to have out-runned if not outdated the future, so very often it feels the Covid crises put me in a work crises cause there is nothing left for me to draw.

Key aspects
Post-Apocalyptic Romanticism (or Love)
The idea to this term came up a couple of years ago while hanging out with a friend at this shut down nuclear power plant nearby Frankfurt. The whole set-up of the scenery, the brutalist architecture of the plant situated in the most beautiful natural environment, couldn’t express in a better way what ́s it like to be living in this bizarre, beautiful and fucked-up world of today. A reality, I am trying to render in my work.
Shortly before this trip I developed a new drawing-technic which, I think, fits well into the whole idea of PAR(L) (Post-Apocalyptic Romanticism (or Love)): before I start drawing I always blacken out the white sheet of paper with charcoal. Once all the “whiteness” (the light) has gone my mind is sufficiently empty to come up with forms and objects which I then erase out of the blackness and thus bring light into the darkness.

Since I am drawing like this digitally, the result not only is a drawing but also a film of the process/development of the drawing (the drawing-app I am working with records every drawing move/step I make on the screen). Since I am also a filmmaker this lets me combine the two things in a rather unusual but very enjoyable kind of way.

I guess one of the reason why I tend to print out the drawings big and hang them up on huge walls is cause I like to think of them as backdrops in or of a film or in like a theater play. Often I set up performances throughout the exhibition to fill my work with a moving and physical narrative. Of course, also the visitors become involuntary actors of this narrative. Within this context I am always trying to let the location of where the exhibition takes place, its history and architecture, be part of the story of my work.
I guess with my work I am also trying to question or experiment with the medias film and drawing.
With Covid19 hitting into the present reality the term PAR(L) and what it stands for gets an unexpected update which makes the originally partly ironic partly serious meaning of it more real then ever: this slow burning feeling of living in a world which is invisibly killing us or has already exceeded the point of no return.
I dont really know yet what that means for my work…

JEFF HARMS

Jeff Harms is both an accomplished artist and an Oscar nominee actor

Friedhard Kiekeben

When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?

Growing up, I remember feeling cartoons on TV were made “for me” (as opposed to adults). I got excited whenever they would come on. In school, we would get worksheets with cartoon characters on them and I would turn them over and trace them. When I would lie in the dark at night I used to see cartoon characters I think I was inventing, sort of scrolling across my visual field. In first grade, I remember, at some point, we were told to draw an aquarium and I overlapped the fish, so some appeared to disappear behind others. The teacher held mine up as an example of smartness. I still remember it 42 years later. It was an early example of learning from my own observation of things in the world, which is so much of what drawing is, and pride.

I was a drawing machine with no reference to academic art. I copied line drawings from the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual. I was learning proportion that way, but it was all very basic. Real illustration seemed so beyond anything I could ever do. Shiny armor, glistening sweat on skin, sunlight through fairy wings… I was (and still am) in awe of what illustrators can do. But I didn’t know anyone who could teach me such things and I had no access to oil paint; Photoshop didn’t exist in the 1980’s.

In 1993 I met a great mentor, Eugene Pizzuto. I say ‘mentor’ but I was really just one of the many students he yelled at… He yelled at each of us, but very specifically. I remember he threw one kids drawing pad out the window and said, “Take the time while you are walking down there to fetch that to think about what you are seeing. It’ll be time better spent than what you are doing in that chair.” He would say, “The trouble with you is, you think you’re a good draftsman, but… yer not.” I was totally guilty. I thought I was great, but I wasn’t.

What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing?

By the time I got to college, I had a certain amount of facility line drawing from life. In my freshman drawing class I was introduced to ink and charcoal. I quickly realized I could do effects of motion and gesture that were cool and evocative. I would whip up my drawings in a fraction of the time as the other students and proudly show off on critique day, barely a speck of ink on my hands. But I recall Phillip Govedare, a great painter and my first real drawing teacher as an adult, he simply said, after
the compliments subsided, “I think you got there too fast.” – I was totally shocked. I really didn’t understand how getting there ‘too fast’ could be a bad thing, and it opened the door to the rest of my life. I remember Eugene Pizzuto saying, “The goal isn’t to finish the drawing. It’s to keep drawing, and ideally, draw for the rest of your life.”

Working with Phillip for the next four years in school, including a semester in Rome, I really started to understand how he saw drawing and painting as an exploration. The rectangle was a window into a world he would discover. It began as a collaboration with the medium. He would spill ink, or drag charcoal with the palm of his hand. The point was to witness what was happening, much like one witnesses the effect of erosion on rocks, or a patina of rust, or layers of fliers. He would draw, and cover with gesso, and draw again, and collage, and then dig back in like an archaeologist, searching for… who knows! But suddenly, the drawing would stand up and look back at you. And then you’d know it was done. And you had gone somewhere new. And it was largely divorced from your own ego, because YOU didn’t necessarily DO it as much as WATCHED it happen. This is an entirely different concept of “Mastery” than is typically sought. I’m very proud of what Phillip taught us and how deeply it sunk into every aspect of my life. Every material in life has it’s nature. You work with it. You bend it. You bend yourself. You adapt. And anything you do is as much a result of the things around you as yourself. You are just another piece of charcoal or another drip of ink. Your decisions are as random as the veins of quartz in a rock, subject to the same forces of pressure. This way of thinking makes everything I do easier. I listen to whatever medium I am required to be using before I begin and as I work. I can quickly adjust and adapt, thanks to how Phillip taught me to listen more than ‘do’.

I spent a couple years dripping painting, scumbling, gluing, digging. It was a great adventure. And then…I recall Denzel Hurley, another great teacher who was watching me in class free-form some abstract drawing. He said, “what are you doing?” I said, “I’m playing with the materials until some kind of space appears.” To which he replied, “What if you knew what the space was before you started?”
It was devastating. I didn’t know. For me, he was basically saying, “what if this way of working you have mastered was taken away? What would you do?”

I think art teaching at some point is asking questions so that students find what they care about enough to defend. I could easily have said to Denzel, “There would be no point without the joy of discovering,” and carried on. But it struck a chord in me that I was back to “showing off”; that my feet were not fully on the path I needed to follow. I think in art this feeling is more important than mastery in the long run. And we live in a century where that is possible. It is really difficult to ask yourself “what am I doing? why am I doing it?” because it often means you must change your life; and you’re always building your life, so every such change can feel like real failure, and involve a certain amount of tearing-down. Blessed are those who find their framework within which they can challenge and tear down their whole lives. Blessed is the painter who finds himself satisfied by the infinite questions found within that discipline, or the ballet dancer, or the tailor. Matisse, David Hockney… I have wandered quite a bit among disciplines myself. And I think for me, it all comes down to composition.

My old teacher Gene Pizzuto talked “composition” constantly. Composition is the hardest to learn and it is everything. It is the the thing you are doing, despite all your other intentions. If you can think in terms of composition, you are finally doing something on purpose. And until you can, you are wandering, which is fine. But you’re wandering.

I recently acted in a short movie. I remember thinking that I maybe had a little more training and experience than the other actors and being proud, and confident that might parts would really shine. Turns out, upon watching the movie, I really stood out in a way that was naturalistic, but totally at odds with every other person in the film. They were playing a kind of “beverly hills 90210” reality – not real at all, but PERFECTLY FINE, light and fun. Compositionally, my performance did not fit AT ALL. My ego is big enough (and my part was big enough) that I believe I ruined an otherwise fine short movie. The director was excited he found a realistic actor to play the lead… but I ruined their movie, just by being myself. The composition, the guiding gestalt of acting styles in the film he mismatched and it was ALL WRONG.

I’ve always tried to learn an art form on it’s own terms, (mostly drawing, music and acting). I’ve meandered for years, but always the last step is thinking in composition(s). Once you have that ability, you can work, as Van Gogh said, “with lightning speed.” I don’t know if that is mastery, but it is a real sea-change in your daily self. You feel different. You carry yourself different. Because you feel as though you are choosing to do something, living your life, as opposed to researching, or groping in the dark. If you can learn composition in drawing or in any art form, you can achieve anything.

I think if you are listening, your occupation chooses you. And I think your nature is more important than mastery. Mastery will come if you are blessed to continue to make things for a long time.

What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?

No such thing as a good drawing or a bad drawing. It is all information. I remember, and I have experienced, art work having a strong presence. Rodin sculptures, Matisse paintings, Richard Serra Drawings and sculptures really feel like people in the room with you. I admire these works, expressive in their composition on a human scale, walking through space.

But the truth is that everything has a presence. Some objects are just better at drawing your eye or your body or your heart into them. Some objects use illusion and material to keep us engaged and asking questions of it and ourselves. We value these objects as they resonate with human attention and even mystery. I admire those artifacts on a scale of human achievement, but really, our cultural ideas of “good and bad” are just so mutable, there is no right answer than to say “mystery and presence is everywhere.” A bad drawing today may itself be the foundation of religion tomorrow. And a great drawing may be dismissed if it no longer holds “relevance” to the culture. Culture is fickle.

We can point to certain criteria and say “does this drawing _?” And the extent to which it achieves that objective, we can say it did well or poorly. A map is great example of a drawing that is either good or bad in getting us where we need to go.Different drawings try to do different things of course.

How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?

I usually end up painting and drawing with my hands no matter how expensive a brush I have at my disposal. There is a saying that Chinese bells do not have clappers in them and must be struck with a mallet by hand because otherwise how would the gods hear them? I feel the same way about finger-painting/drawing.
I have often been praised for having work that exposes its own “process”. But this has always been a result smashing elements together trying to achieve some objective. I don’t wish to become a fine wood-worker, so the oozing glue in my sculptures etc. tells a story of haste, impatience, and a lack of technology. I will admit, I love the way haphazard construction looks. I love things janky and tied together. I like to point out the folly of human endeavors by building colossal objects of dubious construction. Once it becomes an aesthetic, I think it loses the driving force of intention.

I often strive for perfection. The little mess-ups, fingerprints, broken bits really make a spectacular achievement seem really precarious and vulnerable. I love seeing that human element.

The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
The word big is the operative word in the phrase “OnBigDrawings”. Big relative to humans. Humans on the whole have lost a realistic sense of their worth and their physical bodies: the value of being IN their bodies as well as the value of their lives has been replaced with arguments and memes and downloads. So large drawings are specific in that way. They speak physically to the spectator. As Rilke said,
from all the borders of itself,burst like a star: for here there is no placethat does not see you. You must change your life
The world is drawn around us typically in the form of landscape and architecture. We accept these forms as given, as bedrock for going to work, building a family, pinning our hopes and ambitions. We dream in the architecture we were born within.
We are living in a time of great upheaval of large culture systems and governments. Murals and large drawings are ways in which a culture can audition its beliefs. The backdrop of a revolution is the old architecture, streaked with graffiti painted late at night, in the dark, under fear of arrest. It’s a canvas for those without power to express rage and discontent on a public scale.

What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?

I love to hear new stories from new points of view, from exotic and strange locals. Not to diminish my role or life’s work, but at some point I realized that this is not my century. The world is not dying for the lack of another white dude’s ten cents on beauty and purpose in the world.
That said, I am happy to make people laugh. To make them gasp. And to play my role in whatever context I can be useful and welcome. I don’t need to speak, but I am quite happy to do so. I’d like to leave behind a body of work that is self-contained and pleasing like a good pop song that gets played on the radio now and then. I want to make things that reassure people “Everything is going to be okay.” Even if the world crashes down around us.

What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?

Of course a napkin drawing can be great art. I think the more personal an object the more universal. If only you could be as intimate and truthful in large works as you are after a few drinks on a cocktail napkin, you would display your humanity to the world in spite of your ‘big ideas’. -And that would be a really good thing.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
I am currently enjoying the storylines of cartoon series such as Avatar, and HunterxHunter. In addition to being from another culture and new to me, they are just hyper-complex, much like the Bagghavita; full of stories that ramble from one to the next until there is no beginning and no end. A cool metaphysical trait built into the structure.
I love graffiti, but it’s another planet for me. I don’t know anything about it!

How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).

Matisse is always right. The line between drawing and painting… possibly between drawing and anything that involves mark making is blurry.
I guess I think of drawing as a short-hand aimed at one particular idea. As soon as there are two ideas, it becomes ambitious and becomes something else. A hastily drawn picture of my house is a drawing. Add the corner store, and now it’s a map.
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
I prefer ‘mark’ to line. And i do feel irritated by a ‘drawing’ that is made only by smudging graphite in

a realistic depiction of a face etc. Sure, that would count as a drawing, but… lame. Go blow your hand print on a cave wall why don’t you? That’s a painting, not a drawing. Even if its graphite.
What I like about drawing is the contradiction. You see simultaneously the grand image the person wants you to see as well as the dirty scratches that make up the illusion. I love that.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
Absolutely. Sculpting meaningful emptiness is the ultimate expression of any form and the most difficult thing to do. It is essential to consider from the beginning, but often times its the thing you end up scrambling to “put back in.” which is silly. You should probably start over.

My cartoons are on youtube for the world to see or ignore as they wish. I dislike the immediate commodification of these videos with unrelated ads attached to the sides of the screen. Even rejecting the ads before my videos, the platform itself is just there for ads. It is a delusion, that I participate in, that the platform is doing anything but stealing our content to get rich itself. But it is where the people are. So I put my work there. I greatly enjoy the commenting of strangers for better and worse. It is a far more satisfying creative relationship in many ways that I have with these strangers than I have had with my own work in museums and galleries; primarily for the lack of pretension. This is the bottom. We’ve all sold out, clinging to the corporate skirt, talking to each other. Which, I think makes me sort of a jester, entertaining mostly (my demographic reports tell me) men 13-28. Hiliarous.
Similarly, I have created a world and persona that extends to instagram. At one point I also created a fake dating page for cartoons, but it became a waste to continue to fund and brought no traffic.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?

I feel like I missed out on much of the technical aspects of education. My teachers were always more interested in teaching us to be artists first, using metaphors and crazy assignments that challenged us to rethink who we were as people, rather than taught any particular aspect of drawing. Or perhaps I just gravitated to these professors.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?

The pandemic has caused me to scale back large endeavors in favor of smaller more modest ones. I’m grateful for my cartoon as a place to continue to present work. I have spent a lot of time writing longer work solo and collaboratively over Zoom, aimed toward develop the cartoon into a longer format. I am currently editing a narrative podcast (a sci-fi comedy) written with writer David Zorn. We finished that script during the quarantine and have been recording the voices the past month. It’s great fun and a wonderful diversion from the problems of the world.
www.jeffharmsart.com (630)205-0768

Thank you for these wonderful insights into your creative work and process.At first glance, your cartoons, animations, walldrawings, and sculptures seem to cover a very wide spectrum of forms. Yet, I think there are some very interesting common threads. One thing that Jeff Hobbs the Cartoon, your sculptures, stories, and drawings all share is both a sense of ‘longing’ and ‘utopia’ — striving for perfection — but humanity never quite gets there. What are your thoughts on this?

I think there’s an element of comedy in my aesthetic, whether I’m building something out of sticks or animating a character. I think I go back and forth, for example, I will get lost in getting a gesture animated just right, or the cat to look real, but then I remember, “no one cares! This is a comedy!”. So then I can make very light and simple gestures alongside more carefully drawn elements. I think that’s hilarious. I like art I can relate to on a human level; full of mistakes, but somehow balanced. I love the woman who recreated a whole kitchen in sequins, Liza Lou. I remember she said she came back from the Sistine Chapel and she was like “How am I gonna recreate that kind of grandeur with my history.” As Americans we really celebrate these details of our humanity in a working-class way. It’s why Marlon Brando’s style of acting took over. It’s why I love the book Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson. It’s finding meaning in the simplicity of everyday life. For me, humor is the quickest way to bring my ‘self’ along, whether I am acting or drawing; But it can also be a brush stroke or a break in the voice.

CONCEPTS AND KEY THEMES In the past six years, I went from making large-scale outdoor sculpture to acting and animating. There is this horizontal line in every cartoon. That ‘horizon’ is the holdover from my large drawings and public sculpture. Here it becomes a desk, or a fence, or a dashboard. Finding a million ways to use that line is totally ridiculous, but I love it. The characters all strive for something more grand than they have been dealt in life, without knowing what that should be; they try on different postures, different costumes, they seek fulfillment by dating, or making friends.

The inspiration I once found building sculpture on a human scale, I now get from animating smaller gestures in a 2D cartoon, or from making my own gestures, as an actor on camera. The sense of ‘finding myself’ relative to art in real space, is now provoked narratively, by sharing relatable life experiences. I realize that I sound like an alien trying to explain what movies are to the mothership. But I don’t mind. I have always been a big fan of reinventing the wheel. Especially if there is an element of comedy and not taking oneself too seriously. Jeff Hobbs has a giant head and a deep voice that draws you in, but you quickly realize this guy is struggling. And that’s comforting. The sadness and the melancholy is comforting and hilarious. He’s my Stan Laurel, my Jerry Lewis. He takes the fall and makes the rest of us feel graceful and smart.
I am actor living and working in the world of Hollywood. So while the pandemic has got me auditioning via zoom and ‘self-tapes’ I’ve also been afforded the much-needed alone-time to recollect and plan about Jeff Hobbs. Which, in LA- speak, translates to: I wrote a Jeff Hobbs pilot. As a non-animator, I’m trying to figure out how to create these cartoons longer, faster and on a larger stage; I’m terrible at asking for help, know nothing about the business, so I just keep making them slowly, hoping they gain a critical mass at some point; which ideally draws the attention of a larger platform to launch the next step. It’s a way I have learned to trust, to slowly find out why you are really making something in the first place. All art-making, even waiting for the phone to ring, is a feedback loop that helps you discover what you really care about.

TRACY HILL

When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?

I have always drawn, my earliest memories are of me, as a child drawing and exploring how different materials make marks. I think I was naturally attracted to the medium but did not seriously pursue it in its own right until fairly recently.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an on-going association with drawing.
The definition for Mastery is interesting – to have full command or understanding of a subject; outstanding expertise; the power of command; control; victory or superiority. Personally I do not think any of these definitions apply to any aspect of my practice especially drawing. I always feel I am still learning, responding to and embracing the energy, which, is created by the medium I am using and the marks created during the creation of any artwork but especially drawing.

What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?

Specifically thinking about drawing, I do consider the act of mark making as a conversation, it is a conversation primarily with myself, to help me understand something. Through the drawing I always hope to create a visual space, which has enough room for audiences to bring their own questions, interpretations, memories and values. So in this respect a good drawing is always about finding new potential. Julie Mehretu (amongst others) talks about the third space when making. This is a space, which unfolds during the act of making, from this emerges a new understanding or view. I begin a drawing as I begin a walk, it is a discovery, a journey; the journey is participatory between myself, the location of the drawing and the world around me.

On the flip side a bad drawing for me is one, which offers no new insight or understanding to the problem I have posed.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
Drawing in its own right is quite a new discovery for me; it overlaps my print practice and weaves its way through different media and approaches. Process shifts and changes depending on the work and so although it is surely present I am not always fully aware of it when drawing in the same way as I would be in print for example.
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’.

What do you make of big drawings or small drawings, and why does it matter?

My drawings are often fairly large scale and mostly not on paper but in situ on a gallery wall. They have a strong participatory element; the creation is a performance, which responds to the structure of the space. It is important to me that the drawings are immersive and physical. They require audiences to move and explore the drawings in a way that can only happen with enlarged scale.

What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?

Through the drawing I always hope to create a visual space, which has enough room for audiences to bring their own questions, interpretations, memories and values. So in this respect the drawing will always depend on audiences participating to find new potential, but that potential is different for everyone depending on how much they offer and invest in the work.

What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beermat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?

I think small intimate drawings can be extremely powerful. Stillness and quiet conversation is just as important as dynamic immersive conversation. I do not necessarily think they are more personal but they are communicating on a different level. All can be art.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?

I am aware that both Graffiti and Manga cultures are very popular with certain groups of our students. Technology and communication cultures have shifted how we see the world, for younger generations the excitement of technological devices and digital possibilities are not so marked as they have grown up in a world where these things are commonplace. For them maybe the excitement comes from the rediscovery of materials and making. Traditional skills and understanding are now being applied alongside digital tools.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).

“Drawing is the artist’s most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.”Edgar DegasDrawing is a personal documentation of the event of creation.
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
I believe drawing is just as much about the absence of line as it is about lines and gestures. It is about the space created which allows new possibilities to lie within.
‘a line, an area of tone, is not really important because it records what you have seen, but because of what it will lead you on to see’ John Berger (2013)

Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?

I do not think my drawings seek emptiness, however, they do require space and room in order to connect with audiences. They very much rely on an exchange of memories and experiences and for this to happen I believe there needs to be room.

I think this is the same answer as above, my drawings are a very personal reflection of a journey but this is not the complete journey. My drawings are a conversation primarily with myself, to help me understand something. Through the drawing I always hope to create a visual space, which has enough room for audiences to bring their own questions, interpretations, memories and values. So in this respect it always about finding new potential, but that potential is different for everyone depending on how much they offer and invest in the work.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?

In the UK I think this is also the case, children are taught the theories and ‘the correct’ way to see and draw items around them. Sadly in our current education system there is little room or time for connecting creative thought with mark making. From my own experience of watching my children enter school happy to explore materials and expression and within a few months being reluctant to make anything creative for fear of ‘doing it wrong’, I believe the whole approach to teaching art needs to shift. There needs to be a move away from rewarding artworks of any discipline more value if they meet traditional representational criteria. Value needs to be nurtured in order to build confidence to explore the world around us from different often conflicting perspectives. Drawing is the perfect tool for this as it allows you to express different views in a quick and immediate way and at the same time these responses can be made with minimal resources and materials.

One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to the Covid-19 crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time?

Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials?
This is a really interesting question; there are both practical and technical adjustments that have had to be made by everyone. Personally, on a practical level, I was simultaneously separated from my place of work, colleagues and studio. Exhibitions were postponed or cancelled, public engagement events cancelled and a confirmed residency was put back to 2022 almost overnight. This meant funding, income and opportunities disappeared or were delayed.

On a positive note I found that the physical shift to working from my home created a new headspace and perspective. I had to prioritize the work I could do given the space available at home and also re-evaluate what was possible in terms of equipment, or lack of it, in order keep making. I realized quite quickly that my writing and drawing were becoming more closely linked during this time as I the demands on my time were allowed to shift. I was able to read, walk and draw in the same day allowing an extended but natural reflection process to take place.

The restrictions of travel had created a need to re-evaluate the places of engagement and I think shifted the timescale of those engagements. I revisited spaces and location close to and around my home with a new recognition I think. I became more attentive to the extra time, which lock down afforded all of us and I think I began measuring this through my walking. The physical world we could explore became smaller at this time but I was thinking about how we consider the world through multi-sensory engagements creating a pause in normal structures in which we could consider place. Technology did allow me continue travelling and in terms of Way Finding, the world suddenly had the potential to be explored as never before.

So I began thinking about how my drawing could be used to understand this and it has certainly shifted my practice and understanding from different perspectives.
My current drawings are reflecting on the many conflicting perspectives tied up in the landscapes I have revisited. Through the repetition of drawing and monotypes I have created a series of conversations, responding to emotional sensations as well as physical memory of the place. I heard an interesting discussion talking about the truthfulness of touch, which really resonated with me. Humans trust touch to give them access to reality and this comes from a feeling that we have of being active when we explore through touch. During lock down our sense of exploring was removed, touch was described as being dampened. Much of my last few years work has been
about exploring connections to place and materials through touch, it is this sense which grounds us, connects us to the outside world from a direct perspective.So at this time I have resorted to the most touch sensory method of working available to me, to draw.
I have embraced and enjoyed the freedom to work without restrictions of process. I used the daily repetition of drawing to structure my day; interestingly the spaces and spacing of the images on the paper feel as important as the marks themselves. They helped to ground me when the rest of the world was unsettled, there was a real need to draw each day.

JAMIE GLASS

Friedhard Kiekeben

When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?

To be honest, I don’t actually remember ever NOT drawing–I’ve been doing it since I could grasp a cylinder (or a stick, or even some rocks) and deface walls, mud, and sidewalks.

What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.

To be able to use the precision that can be accomplished with drawing–I think even before we understand the concept of mastery, or even that the word itself exists, the desire to reach some sort of grander competence coexists with the desire to freely express, and in some cases merge.

What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?

Drawing is art and I strongly suspect that we judge it in the same way, that is, we know “good drawing” when we see it, judging it either by photorealistic semblance, or some sort of mastery in technique–whatever that may be– and we also bring into that value judgement if the creator had a goal, the origins/inspiration for and of the image, and even the experience within the medium of the creator; ie, someone who has only just begun working with this more precise medium will have their work judged differently than someone who is more experienced. This “judgment” breaks down further, since drawing can and is done with various media–and the ability to erase or not, to “correct in process–also affects that value.

How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?

While it’s not something I spend a lot of time consciously doing, I do have a process that I use, both to get myself into the “space” to work, as well as the steps/technique to accomplish the work.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).

I think that’s fascinating that Matisse said that, since Matisse’ technique (limited palette, etc) has had tremendous influence on my process, and interestingly enough, I tend to agree. The fundamental difference between painting and drawing–and I mean this as a generality, since the difference lessens as the marking material becomes more fluid, ie, ink–is the level of precision that can be reached with somewhat less effort.

In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?

There is a school of thought/philosophy that considers all visual work to be line, or based on line; when we discuss organic shapes, bodies, etc, we talk about the “line” of conformation–the contour–so ultimately, everything IS line.

Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
That concept of “emptiness” is also considered a form of “harmony” and I do pursue that sense of harmony, a balance between myself and the image.

I think it’s no misstatement to say that in the very act of displaying, of sharing, what is created in a way that removes control of who the end viewer might be, that this in its very nature is both social and participatory.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?

Of course there are other, perhaps more organic, ways to teach drawing, even following the seemingly “do it however you’re moved to do it” method that’s applied in other visual forms. But it would seem that both the method and the learning in that vein as well as its desirability, would be entirely dependent on what the final aim, at least in that “beginning stage,” is, of the creator.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to the Covid-19 crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
The combination of fear, isolation, and to a degree material scarcity, have all certainly made me look at materials to create with in different ways. Like Picasso, I have gathered cardboard because it is versatile and can be both canvas and a construction material (as well as be pulped and transformed into something more plastic), and in addition, have found myself revisiting the large pieces of kraft paper that protected other works, to the degree that I am in fact incorporating them into this particular project, a reflection and an action that is purely situationally caused.

My big concerns now revolve around the state of the US as it moves forward, not only in terms of the pandemic (which is an immediate, “affects us all” concern and situation), but also the political climate, which seems to be specifically engineered to continue divisiveness, creating deeply entrenched points of view, and how in some ways banal it seems to be concerned about a personal future when a collective one seems so precarious.
Thank you for sharing these insights. Your series of ‘Crown’ portraits is an outstanding body of contemporary portraits, both in their own right as digital vector drawings, as well as in relation to the world changed by Covid 19.

How would you consider and place your work in relation to the history and practice of portrait art in general?

Aristotle said, “The aim of Art is to present not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance; for this, not the external manner and detail, constitutes true reality.” The history of portrait art as it has come to be known in the last several centuries and more primarily in the Western world, is that it has become the depiction of someone famous, powerful, and eventually, wealthy enough, to commission such a remembrance of themselves. Some artists represented that internal, others the “desired internal” or whatever quality the represented wanted, via symbolism of color, clothing, accoutrements, and such. And still to this day, the concept of portrait is that of a private commission of sorts, something for the upper class, the famous, the well-to-do, and again, for many, it is to portray some sort of higher ideal, of beauty, bravery, vigor, and wealth, for examples. However, the work I’ve done, in essence, turns some of that around. These are portraits of what we all consider to the “common” person, doing “common” things—except given the circumstances we find ourselves in during this period of time from late March of 2020 onward, these people depicted are, for the most part, doing something extraordinarily heroic: facing the invisible threat that is COVID-19 to care for and help others. That they are “ordinary” people, actual everyday heroes, is where the departure from traditional portraiture begins. Yes, there is a degree of “self-editing” by the sitter, in that these are predominantly based on selfies, with occasional “someone else took this shot of me” contributions. That said, it was my hope that in drawing these portraits, that these every day acts of heroism would be seen, that the “sitters” would know that they are seen, their bravery recognized, and their goodness loved and validated, and that others, seeing these qualities shining out at them, might take courage, hope, and encouragement.

FRIEDHARD KIEKEBEN

When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?*

I sometimes drew as a child but I was more attracted to colored marker pens and then moved into oil painting in my teens. Drawing served as a means to end until I learnt it could be something different at art school.

What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.*

I think the ‘old masters’ had a greater need for masterfully rendered drawings to train artists in figurative and spatial illusionism. In a way, in those days drawing took on the kind of structure- giving task that in the modern era is frequently left to more technological approaches such as projection, photography, reprographics, and so on.

What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?*

I think this question does not concern any particular choice of medium. Everyone has their own preferences, such as a bias towards Manga or abstraction or any of the’isms’. When I look at work – or my own – I always try to understand what it was the artist tried to accomplish, and then I use that as a benchmark for evaluation. My personal artistic concerns share little with the drawings of Alberto Giacometti, but in looking at his work I can appreciate a level of perfection that only is possible through the utmost commitment to the medium. Giacometti ‘went further’ and it communicated in any of his portraits or sketches.
At the same time I am convinced that artists working today often succeed through a more whimsical approach. Drawings after all allow for freshness and openness, and leaving things unsaid or unfinished better than paintings. An artist such as Tracy Emin expresses that really well.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?*
I have been teaching a lot of drawing during the past ten years, and learnt a lot about how students can improve their drawing skill. Generally, the traditional focus on perfectly rendered forms is brought into question, and a much more ‘process-based’ and ‘experimentation-based’ approach seems to allow inexperienced artists to develop much faster, and more joyfully.

The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?*

I initiated this project seven years ago after noticing that some of the most interesting contemporary art that was being produced in Chicago at the time was celebrating drawing, but it do so in unusual ways, and often on the kind of immersive, large scale that is traditionally the domain of painting.
All works of art change is they are executed at different scales, and a small intimate drawing could be scaled and refined into a very powerful large scale piece. While the first is more like an ‘idea’ the second is designed to be appreciated in a gallery or public art setting.
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?*
I am interested in making things that convey an ‘experience’, rather than just an idea.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?*
I think over the centuries most artist and also architects and designers made small sketch-like work, which often serves the main purpose of working out a concept for something larger, that’s then executed in another medium. ‘Drawing as a blueprint’. I suspect that many of the finest classical drawings made it into museums and galleries more because museum curators, collectors, and other artists appreciated their beauty or value, than by original design. If, however, the artist themselves chose a ‘painting-like’, and wall-based presentation for the work there is more clarity about the purpose of these pieces as art for public display.
I admire the drawings made by Joseph Beuys made throughout his career as he was very outspoken about the fact that these were meant to be seen and recognized as an art form. Paul Klee is another artist who reflected on the object-character of drawings. Those drawings he deemed more ‘personal’ stayed in his sketchbooks. Those drawing he wanted to be seen as paintings got executed as larger scale pieces mounted on card panels from a printers shop, and he exploited further opportunities to carve into the drawings, experiment with imprinting and transfer, and add washes and paint marks. A few years ago I saw an incredible overview of Klee’s large scale works on card board, and was amazed by how these prices managed to have the ‘lightness’ of drawing but communicated as paintings. Klee himself was quite outspoken about his preference of a drawing-aesthetic over painting on canvas.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
I work with a lot of students who work in these ways, which were often formed in the course of their teenage years. Most artists want to represent well early on.I think it is very important for an art education to develop a full understanding in students of other approaches that were hard earned throughout the 20th century, yet I feel the current desire for quick results is beginning to undermine this. If I had not had a passionate art history teacher at art school who pointed out the importance of Jackson Pollock’s or Yves Klein’s innovations, I would not have become an abstract artist myself, or developed a life-long and in-depth connection with abstract art.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).*
I am with Matisse – these are two possibilities within a continuum of making art, and I see no ultimate difference.

In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?*

I think it was a fantastic show, but as the title suggests, I saw too much of an emphasis on line- based work.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?*
I am inspired by Frank Stella’s approach to this. Stella is one of the actual creators of the minimal movement in abstract art, which in essence is an appreciation of the more Asian qualities of ’emptiness’. Yet, over the years Stella moved towards a ‘maximalism’, –structures that are cramped full of forms, colors, textures, materials– yet he always maintained his maximalism was a form of minimalism. Seeking emptiness through richness of form. I can relate to that idea.
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?*
Many of my recent walldrawing projects are done on a fairly large scale, and with the intent to communicate with an audience through an immersive experience. In some recent work this also takes form as public art in spaces and contexts outside of the gallery.Yet most of my work starts as a simple gesture done with a Wacom pen or on an iPad. A few digits of information, recording someones gesture on a screen. This is the ‘mark’ of our era – it is hardly physical at all… or is it?

Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?*

This is something I try to do in my own drawing classes.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and is the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?*
The situation emerging early in 2020 quickly made me rethink my creative practice for the year. I had a number walldrawing projects in progress, exhibitions overseas that are nearly finalized, and a series of big black and white acrylic paintings that is nearing completion. Yet I put all these projects on hold — it won’t be forever — and started working on a much more intimate series of hybrid paintings. I don’t have a title for this series yet, but it is brashly painterly and done in neon colors, and very different from anything I have ever done. Each piece originates in a piece of software called ‘KidPix’, before becoming painted, printed, and drawn hybrid paintings. Maybe this was my form of escapism for this year?
Oh, and then… there is also: OnBigDrawings.

CHARLES MAHAFFEE

When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
I’ve drawn for as long as I can remember. I remember getting in trouble for drawing in class, making up really really bad comic book characters, drawing little demons (it was the 90s), things like that. I think I was first attracted to drawing because it was available. I didn’t try painting till I was 15.

What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing?

Honestly I really don’t know what mastery is, I’ve tried to define it all my life, tried to attain it, but I think its so elusive because it only exists within certain conditions. To call something mastery or not right now as independent of race, class, location and other factors seems indulgent.
What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?

A good drawing has immediate impact whatever it is, even if the impact is WTF, and sustains it. Which seems to be the same with most good things in general. A bad drawing is one you don’t remember.

How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?

Now I’m far more focused on the image first, but the process of drawing and leaving evidence of that in the handling is always necessary. I don’t have the patience for hyper-realism, so I’ve learned other tricks.
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
In the first show in 2014 I saw the scale as necessary for big big impact. Especially in present circumstances during the pandemic working that size is simply not possible. But more than that, I really don’t feel the need at all to make such giant piercing statements, most of what I want to say now doesn’t require it.

What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?

I want them to laugh or empathize depending on the subject, sort of share in some snideness, and laugh with me about ourselves. There’s always a more serious point and theme, but the joke’s usually on me.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?

Pretty much every drawing I make now falls under those categories! I think artists are rethinking what art actually does in the world, because making aesthetic statements seems hollow, at least it does for me. The small intimate drawings we make when we’re feeling vulnerable say way more than any history painting.

The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
It’s a generation finding their own language, drawing about what’s important to them. My generation did the same, we just had different (maybe worse?) things to work with.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).

I’m not sure that distinction matters much anymore. Images made today are just as likely to be combinations of what would be traditionally considered drawing and painting. It’s more an issue of making images, less about what specific medium one uses.
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’.

Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?

Not at all. Drawings are more about images. Abstract, figurative, anything. Even drawings about line are images about line.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
Rarely, and only for emotional effect. I’ve been more attracted to making everything dense, in fact most of my mistakes are from making things too dense.

Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
I think drawings are all those things. It definitely can be social and participatory because most everyone can do it! It’s a foundational activity, we draw before we write, so it’s a primary mode of communication.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
Drawing is a great way to learn how to think visually. It exercises and trains your brain as well to adjust to other modes of communication, like learning a new language. I think drawing as thinking could be any interesting teaching method, but having never taught I would have no idea how to successfully implement it.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
Covid has changed everything about how I think about art. The art world is still reeling from the blow, and it’s hard to think of shows, exhibitions, and theory that seem more and more irrelevant. Having to work from home brought me back to what I loved about making drawings, but also led me to seriously question my motives for my ambitions. What has remained is outrage mixed with a somewhat uplifting realization that art doesn’t need to be taken so deathly serious to be timely and enjoyable.

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When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
I always found it difficult to draw as I struggled with the concept of interpreting a three-dimensional world in two dimensions. It was only about ten years ago when I began to think of drawing as process, performance, and extension of my physical self and a means of understanding my material environment, that drawing began to make sense. It started to connect directly to my experience as a sculptor.
2)What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
Whilst I can appreciate and enjoy all forms of drawing, I needed to find a way of using the medium, which had value for me personally and through which I could explore and understand the world around me.
3)What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?
Very subjective – but for me, one which touches the soul and opens up a new way of understanding, or seeing the world around us.
4)How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
My drawings are a result of process. They are an extension of my practice as a sculptor, they are a way of thinking and they are a means of exploring an ‘idea’ without any notion of what the result might be.
5)The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
Scale is of little importance to me. However, since most of my drawings tend to be an extension of my physical self, they more often than not tend to be large.6)What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
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Historically I always thought of drawing as being a private practice, and for the most part, it remains that for me. But more recently I have done a series of exhibitions where the drawings have been made as live performance. Whilst initially reluctant, I found the experience to be very rewarding. There is a much more direct relationship between the audience and the physicality of the process. More interestingly, from a personal perspective, making the drawings in different locations with different audiences, feed the work in quite different ways. I did a drawing as a live performance in the National Art Gallery in Craiova, Romania, directly in front of the work of one of my most important artists, Brancusi – and the connection I felt between that work, which changed or understanding of sculpture, was profound. But I have also made this work in tiny spaces with an audience literally pressing up against me, an intimacy which made me feel they were directly part of the process.
Beyond that, I just hope my drawing might make someone think differently, even if they don’t like what I do.
7) What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
Drawing for me is about thinking and exploring an idea. It can be done anywhere and on anything – and a little doodle on a beer mat can be as profound as a Leonardo masterpiece.
8) The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
We each need to find our own path. Creativity is creativity and in our current climate, ought to be valued in all its forms.
9) How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
I am not a painter, but if I understand that to mean that a drawing is as significant as a painting, I would completely agree. Its about what makes an audience think – what takes them to a different place, or reveals a different way of seeing and understanding.
10) In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
Having not seen the exhibition, it is difficult to evaluate the title. Did it simply refer to the drawings as being constructed by line – did it mean ‘On Line’ more colloquially as being on message – current – in tune?
11) Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
Sol Lewitt’s black and white wall drawings usually start with a very simple logical, or mathematical formula – and yet when you see them, they take you on a journey, which is anything but dry. I have seen South Korean artists contemplate a huge sheet of paper for what seemed like hours, before attacking it with ink and brush in a kind of transcendental dance. It might be that the period on meditation was a process of emptying the mind, but the resulting action was an expression of something deep and rich. I try to understand what I see from a personal, not intellectual perspective – perhaps very wrongly??
12) Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
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I think performative work can be deeply personal and intimate. In fact it is very hard to leave the security and privacy of the studio, where it is safe to reveal the intimate – and then to do that in front of an audience. I do both, both are intimate in very different ways and certainly no less intimate that drawing in any other generation.
13) Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
Whilst I tried to learn to draw in art school, I never understood how to draw until I understood my own work. That was many years – perhaps 20 years after I left art school.
14) One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
If there have been any positives to the ongoing Covid pandemic, it is perhaps that it has given us time to reflect without the usual demands. It has been a time to re-valuate what is important, what does making work mean for me, even if there is no audience at the moment. Stopping is unnatural, but also has its values.
I have continued to make work in the studio. In fact Experiments XXX and Experiments XXX Part 2 are very recent works made during lockdown. Last year I did a small research project with University College London in relation to Motor Neurone Disease. As part of that process I spent some time with an elderly woman, Mrs Begum, who was in the very last stages of the illness. She described how gradually her life was curtailed by what she was able to do, effectively restricting her movements and shutting her off from the world. I did not know how to process that information at the time, but ironically when Covid19 effectively put us into lockdown curtailing our daily lives, Experiments XXX, Part 1 and Part 2 found their form. I wanted to do a drawing where I was fixed to one spot – shoes nailed to the floor – and explore the extent of my reach. I also thought about the collapse of the physical body, which informed the second part of the work.
I have also been working on a series of drawings ‘measuring time’ in different ways. A series of continuous drawings where I would draw without stop for 12 or 24 hours and a drawing creating a single line for everyday of my life – a drawing which I hope does not reach a conclusion for many years to come!
15) 16) 17), etc. Your own questions and concerns…
Answers to the questions will form the basis of key sections on the new resource that will be presented in a dialogue format. This will be the basis for further conversations with each artist. until mid December 2020 when the site and social media initiative will launch. A second stage of the project is planned from March 2021 to go further into depth with some of the key issues raised, and to consider the evolving — stabilizing (?) — situation for 2021 and beyond.
Friedhard Kiekeben

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Jeanine Riedl
When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
I have no memory of drawing as a kid until age 5, when I fell in love with a horse named Spirit who lived on the farm next door. Spirit was archetypically beautiful, with a very long mane and tail. I started to draw her so I could always have her with me and because she seemed to be an enchanted beast. Maybe the act of drawing Spirit was akin to how the cave artists felt when they reproduced powerful likenesses of animals; they could share in its power and mystique. Anyway, drawing obviously had great value then! Later in life, I painted in oils and never really enjoyed it. Twenty years ago, I began to work on paper exclusively. Drawing is more approachable, more accessible, and I love its directness and transitory nature.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
It’s magical to create the illusion of volume on a flat piece of paper. Light and shadow intersect and group new tonal relationships. The observed world then is fluid with receding and advancing edges and forms. It’s an exercise in appreciating what you are actually seeing and experiencing.
What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?
When I look at an image and feel transported into another way of thinking, then that’s an effective work of art, no matter what genre or medium. There has to be a transformative effect.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
For me, attention to process is essential, which means reacting to your materials, its’ possibilities, limitations and resistance. You’re not in total control; the material opposes your wish, and the dialogue/ struggle begins.
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
It’s a difference of participation for both the artist and the viewer. Smaller drawings are intimate. Large
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work is immersive, environmental. It’s different making large work because I am “in” the drawing. I move up to execute detail and away from it to gain perspective on the whole. It’s a physical involvement and relationship.
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
Monumental . Bigger than self. Time and motion are involved because you have to view the drawing at a distance and up close.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
Intimate sketches are glimpses into the mind of the artist. Sketchbooks seem unselfconscious, not “arty”. I love looking at sketchbooks and make all my students create a dedicated book for the class. Sketchbooks are essential to my own process. I travel and work fairly realistically on site in sketchbooks, studying and recording landscape, botanical and wildlife structures. Back in my studio, I work abstractly, using the memories and associations of having been in that place and having the experience of painting there, but not working directly from my sketchbook images.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
I encourage it, because it is their milieu. I ask them to bring in what they are looking at, and we have a discussion about style, character, and narrative structure. I don’t know much about manga myself, so I appreciate what they choose to share with me. I can’t say I am convinced enough to read manga myself, but the discussions are interesting.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
Drawing is informal and direct. Drawings seem more private and transitory because of the fragility of the medium,
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
I see line as a directive movement signifying “coming from here” “going to there” but also signifying the volume or force of that directive. Line can pile up to create active mass/ density, like a porous mesh of intersecting forces, an electric network.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
I don’t seek “emptiness” per se. I want air (breath) to have volume (body) and movement (gesture). My drawings are essentially air and space made sculptural and imply movement.
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
My former work was about the natural environment and the natural and human forces which affect it. My latest work, because of my anger at the current government, includes social and political as well as ecological references.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
Two ideas:
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Scaling up beginning drawings so that gesture and the body become the dominant element/ force. Scale forces drawings to be more than intimate. Beginning drawings don’t need to be so precious.
Photographing the process of one’s drawing with an iPhone to make simple films, (maybe just about a moving line) so the process becomes the subject rather than finished product. Elements of the film can be reversed or repeated, so that the drawing becomes nonlinear and time becomes circular.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
I am working smaller scale, about 30” x 40”. The current images begin with an ink monoprint from a New York Times spread, leaving crinkled textures, leached text, or actual bits of the newspaper glued to the surface. The image proceeds from that base. These works reflect my frustration with the obfuscating language of our current government concerning every aspect of our political, social, and ecological lives. The “ spin” has twisted real meanings, actual situations and scientific facts, leading to harmful misinformation. This work is related to former work in that I still use the aggressive mark as the emblematic carrier of immense forces within urban and natural environments.
I have felt more focused during the pandemic, even though the political environment has been immensely stressful. Maybe I could only have made this particular body of work in isolation, who knows?
Covid has certainly allowed more time to work, but how I conduct my studio life has not changed that much because of it.
From Jeanine
Dear Olivia,
Thank you for these reflections on your wonderful work. It is fascinating to see how different this new collage work is from some of the previous frieze-like wall drawings, such as ‘Polar Nights’. In the earlier work there often is an observation in nature at the outset, and then an intensive drawing process in which you are emulating what is at work in the kind natural forces of the physical world. In fact the earliest, and very personal, experience, is with wanting to draw, is in the close relationship with your ‘spirit horse’ that you had as a child.
The recent body of work, by contrast, engages with a very public matter in an almost Dada inspired way. Newspaper footage gets collected, analyzed, and fragmented and it’s all to do with the tense political situation of America in 2020. Then, these pasted-up sheets provide a canvas for gestural, and sometimes very colorful intervention. The tension of ‘natural’ forces now gives way to an engagement with tension and friction within ‘societal’ forces.
Could you tell us more about this shift?
Jeanine: Thank you for your analysis! It is beautifully stated. I love the Dada connection – not one I had thought of!
I am obsessed with current events, and read many news sources daily. It was the hope embodied in the Obama election that a forward-looking, “cool” era was upon us. Instead, with Trump as president, the xenophobia and racism of our national history was reactivated. It was shocking to me

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that “democracy” now seemed a fragile notion. Then there was the environment, which is being ravaged – it was difficult to witness all this destruction.
The “Spin” series, based on ink monoprints of New York Times spreads or actual collaged news text within the image, was an attempt to fold the painful realism of the day within the messiness, openness and accidental aspects of abstraction. I don’t know whether I will continue to fold political events into my imagery, but it was important for me to do it at this time.
Of course I blame Trump for my shift into more socially referenced work. I am obsessed with the news, and read many sources daily. It was the hope embodied in the Obama election that a forward- looking, modern, “cool” era was upon us. As for many, it is shocking to me how quickly democratic norms have been violated. The election of Obama activated the deep racism of this country. Then there was the environment, which is being so ravaged, and it was painful to witness. The world became disturbingly real and I couldn’t ignore it.
The “Spin” series, based on ink monoprints of New York Times spreads or actual collaged news text within the image, was an attempt to fold the painful realism of the day within my painterly, gestural approach.
I have always been concerned to relax the boundary between realism and abstraction. Until now, my work process has included preliminary observational on site studies of the environment as preparation for my abstract studio work. In “Spin”, the messiness, openness and accidental aspects of abstraction were directly pitted against the specificities of the news cycle.
With the election of Trump, the world became disturbingly real. I was obsessed with the news. The “Spin” series, constructed on top of ink monoprints of New York Times spreads, was an engagement with and opposition to the painful realism of the day. I don’t know if this is a one off, or whether I will continue to fold political events into my imagery. I’ll have to see.

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When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
I started drawing as a child, copying images from magazines and comic books; then moved on to still lives at high school, and eventually studying the human figure in detail from direct observation, at the University of Ife in Nigeria, where drawing was taught as a separate discipline. I have always been drawn to drawing – the immediacy of approach, drawing materials being readily available for use with little or no preparation. Something else I love about drawing is that it requires application of varying degrees of pressure from the hand to achieve a range of light and dark tones, similar to the way a string payer would apply varying arm weights and speeds on the bow to create musical expression.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
For me ‘mastery’ is a matter of control: eye-hand-mind control, in such a way that one can use the medium to express a creative intention as precisely as possible. This mastery might mean finding novel ways of using/ manipulating the medium in non-traditional ways to express a personal vi- sion/idea, thus broadening the visual vocabulary of drawing, so to speak.
What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?
A good drawing makes one feel ‘something’. It has its own power. It takes one to places in one’s being that are full of energy. A bad drawing just sits there, does nothing, “not even makes eye contact”.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
Process is so important. Each artist has to find the process that helps his/ her idea to be realized tangibly, and expressed in the most satisfying way. A way of capturing the truth of an aesthetic moment/sensation/concept.
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
The bigger a drawing is, the more its affective presence becomes palpable, and the wider visual as well as traversable space it commands—viewers step into the drawing’s space when they move close to it. Smaller drawings are more intimate because one has to move close to them to appreciate all the details. However, monumentality has nothing to do with the size of the drawing per se, but with the
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proportional relationship of parts of the drawing. So both big and small drawings can feel monumental.
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
I have a phenomenological approach to art appreciation. I believe that artworks are products of the human psyche and as such each person’s subjective experience affects his/her interaction with the work. Therefore I would not like to prescribe the way people relate with my work. My intentions for making each work serve mainly towards getting the work created. After that people relate with it on their own terms, bringing their own experiences to bear in that process.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
They can all be art.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
Each generation has a sense of what they consider a significant image, sometimes based on what the prevalent visual culture is, or as a reaction against the dominant culture. Though both reasons are valid, I tend to lean towards the later, as it is more likely to support an original and unique artis- tic vision/voice.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
In the broadest, simplest (perhaps simplistic!) sense, a painting is the application of paint to a surface with a tool, whilst a drawing is the dragging of a drawing medium (eg. charcoal, pastel, oil bar, graphite stick etc.) by hand (without the use of a tool like a brush) across a surface to make a mark (or series of marks obviously).
However, the words – drawing and painting, both implying a continuum, are impossible to define (i.e. confine within fixed boundaries). Perhaps it is a bit easier to define what a painting is, drawings are more ubiquitous! Perhaps it is the intension of the artist that can determine whether he/she makes a painting or a drawing. My drawings are often made with pastel and graphite on paper (more recently, mounted on canvas), sometimes with pastel and yarn on paper. They look like paintings with broad areas of colored shapes etc. Perhaps they can be called “painted drawings”.
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
Yes and No. A blue square shape can be made by drawing several blue lines very close together, with a colored crayon. However, a good number of Richard Serra’s drawings are made by pouring molten oil bars onto hand made paper – not drawing a single line.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
Yes, but my pursuit of emptiness is in the sense of emptying-out. It shares the same conceptual space with minimalism, but is slightly different. It leaves a feeling of a pregnant or ‘full’ emptiness. My work is about the dualism of the tangible and intangible, objective and subjective, body and mind, the self in portraits. I create spaces that contain the intangible not as emptiness, but containing the unseeable essence of self.
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
My diptych series, the Outer and Inner Head series, has tangible colors in acrylic and yarn on the left
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panel, and a right panel showing the image on the left panel drawn in clean graphite lines only. The viewer is invited to gaze on painted image on the left for about 10 seconds and then transfer gaze to the center of the drawn panel on the right. The complementary colors would appear in the viewer’s mind’s eye, which are ‘projected’ onto the drawn panel. This visual interactive process essentially involves the neurology of the viewer in the painting process, because it is only after the complementary colors are experienced by the viewer that the work is complete and fully experienced. The drawing on the right panel functions both as a drawing and a field on which the viewer’s psychophysiological experience of seeing an after-image can be ‘projected’. This is another function/ role I have assigned to drawing.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
Drawing is usually taught in schools as an object-referenced process, with emphasis on accuracy of recording from observation, verisimilitude, etc, This process has its merits, but perhaps there should be an equal focus on the subjective, an expression of what is felt about/looking at objects, as a basis for making a creative response.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
The Covid-19 pandemic has scampered things quite a bit! I was about to start an artist residency at a university in California in March 2020, which could have included a large scale wall drawing. It is now postponed due to the pandemic. There is a shifting opening date for an exhibition I have just curated for the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild here in New York. A local metal fabricator has not been able to make a sculpture piece from the maquette I gave them. The list goes on… I have been working just mainly in my studio.
Perhaps more significantly, in reaction to the doom and gloom brought on by the global health crisis, I find myself exploring visual excitement in colors, and happier subject matter, particularly in my paintings, as a way of engaging with more uplifting thoughts. I started exploring the theme of – Happy Dance, to connect with happier times and as forward looking to the time when the pandemic will be over.
Also, the new globally prevalent mask-wearing culture, a preventive mea- sure against Covid-19, made me start investigating mask-wearing in traditional cultures in Nigeria where I grew up. I had done some work in the past inspired by the Egungun Masquerade. My new series – Masked Heads explores the idea of masking, facial coverings, how facial expressions could be used to mask one’s true feelings, and whether the face itself could mask
one’s true identity. I am fascinated by the way mask wearing at once conceals and reveals – whilst covering up the facial identity of the wearers, reveals something of the subconscious in their presence.

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O n B ig D r a w i n g s
ART AT HOME
20 2 0

Friedhard Kiekeben
When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement
I have always considered drawing to be more of a place than a thing. As a young child growing up in a small coal camp in southern West Virginia in deepest Appalachia, my exposure to art was less than none. However, at some point very early on and for some long-forgotten reason I had a need to copy the Sunday comics. Finding a piece of paper and a pencil I began to consider Daffy Duck, Pluto, Pogo and while doing so the outside world seemed to fade away for a moment as I entered a private world of both extreme focus and odd pleasure. Never a good student and stuck in a three-room cinderblock school house along the C&O Railroad right of way where three teachers taught six grades, two grades to room, my inability to read was replaced with an ability to copy exactly pictures in books. At some point my parents would buy a small pad of paper at the grocery store and later my father found a large roll of discarded blueprints that I used the backs of to make much larger drawings. All along through my wild years of growing up I was always pulled towards that secret quiet world of rendering on the backs of scrap paper that became a doorway to my own private escape.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
As a mature artist with now fifty-years of a dedication to the act of drawing I still find myself continually unsure and searching. I guess if anyone did anything over this long of time a sort of mastery can’t help but occur, however when I am working I am sure don’t feel like one that is for sure.
What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?
I never ask that question.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
Like any endeavor the more one does a familiarity of the action can’t help but develop a process over time. In drawing the choice of media, surface, technique of application of media, scale and most importantly the focus of the work all control and in turn become a process by default if nothing else.
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The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
The foundation of my large-scale work begins with constantly drawing in small sketchbooks. From these I select one and redraw without projection so as to focus on the difficult nature of rendering it large that keeps it honest and authentic, to embrace the enhanced surface size and presence and to use my body as part of the mark making. I always find it a great challenge to draw at the furthest reach of my arms with the use the of the simplest of media..
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
It seems that every time a body of my work is shown, what I thought it was about is most times not what other people see. Many times, other folk’s comments highlight a much richer and deeper read of what the work is saying to them which I never saw. I see my job as just doing as much work as possible and stacking them up. It will take time, and those that see the work sort it out because thinking about how the audience of the work will react while working takes me no place good.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beermat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
What is or isn’t art is way beyond me. My sketchbooks are so very important to me and an integral element in everything I do.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
I have barely enough time to focus on my own work. Other than through some sort of osmosis from living in the city and working at an art school, I will let that generation fight their own battles.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
I try to make my drawings be more like paintings and my paintings to be more like drawings
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
The term to draw is defined primarily to pull, move, extract, to obtain, withdraw, suck, to elicit a response, to reach a conclusion, in playing cards, disembowel, attract, rotation on a ball, a ships depth, finished even, and also to produce an image with lines and marks.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
I am reminded by how David Sylvester wrote about Giacometti. That he was always looking for that edge where the volume meets the void. I find that a noble pursuit.
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
I hope my work has a foot in both camps.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art
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schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
One can expose students to techniques, attitudes, concepts and examples, but in the end, it is up to each one of us the life-long chore of constantly teaching ourselves how to draw.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to the Covid-19 crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being a!ected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials?
Although I miss the freedom to travel and to do all the normal activities with family and friends, my studio is in the building where I live so I have used this time of lockdown to work, work, work. Also, my current work has as its foundation in the study of slide sections of the effects of black lung disease on coal miners (like my family) back home in southern West Virginia. This fact somehow in a strange way points to the current virus in some respects.

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O n B ig D r a w i n g s
ART AT HOME
20 2 0

Jeanine Riedl
When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
I was born into a family of calligraphers and inevitably given a brush from about age 3. I don’t know if I can say Japanese calligraphy is considered drawing, but I drew lines with ink on paper with a brush every day for long hours, and I started writing pen drawings when I was about 10 years old, and since my 30s I’ve been using a Uni-Posca, a brand of very thick markers. Now I use a digital pen tab, but it still doesn’t feel like a part of me.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
I honestly don’t know. At Japanese art prep school, I drew more than 100 pencil drawings for admission. I learned many basic traditional technics of drawings/paintings using pigments to copy Italian Renaissance religious paintings using Western tempera painting, and Japanese old paintings too. In addition, my major was traditional Japanese design, such as family crest and kimono pattern design. It was a fun time because I liked them, but on the other hand, it was strictly forbidden to draw new things like a manga etc. with using those techniques. In the end, I became a student who didn’t go to college very often. It took me a long time to get out of those basic techniques I learned in the art college and be free to create my own unique work.
What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?
To me, a good drawing is a drawing that I want to see over and over again, and a bad drawing is a drawing that I never want to see again.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
I think it’s very important, but I can’t really explain the why and how right now.
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
I have thought what means “big” from On Big Drawing. Maybe it must be not physical size to object nor drawing size to me. All art works and project I have worked on recent years were large size installations. But I can’t think the same thing after COVID19 now.
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Since the exhibition will be in online gallery, I decided from the start to produce my work in digital format. I wanted to print it on cloth, so naturally the drawing was a vertical. There is a difference between the necessary dpi for printing and the appropriate size for digital display, and it became the work that I put big drawings and small drawings at the same time by chance.
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
This time, I’m going to make face masks from clothes with printed patterns from my drawing, and I will ask people to actually use them in their daily lives. Since Covod-19, I have been making masks, so I think masks are the best way to express my presence.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beermat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
Sorry, I’m still not sure what the mean of the question.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
Is there such a trend? I didn’t know that. I’m a Manga cartoonist now, but I didn’t always want to be one. I had something I really wanted to express and I couldn’t express it in one drawing. I needed a story to tell, so I used the Manga form. Most films and novels with lesbian themes were hopeless and dark and erotic in even 90s, so I wanted to change that image by drawing a fun, cute, positive and energetic story about the lesbian community at that time. I wanted to convey laughter, comedy, energy and lightness in the past and future timeline. Manga was the perfect medium to do that.
If what you want to express is story and visual, I think movies and animation are the way to go, but it’s not easy because it’s usually created by a large group of staffs. In that respect, I think comics are good because you can create and finish both the story and the art by yourself.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
I would love to know what the difference is, too, since I was wondering the same. I think the point is using or not using paint too.
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
Sorry, I’m getting more and more confused.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in yourwork?
Sure, I was born in a family business of Japanese calligraphy and grew up surrounded by not only calligraphy, but also various East Asian paintings, prints and artifacts, so I think the concept of ’emptiness’ in Asian paintings is ingrained in me.
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
When I was an art student in the 80s, I was influenced by the experimental plays of Shuji Terayama, who created avant garde Tenjosajiki theater, that improvised their stage play according to how the audience interacts. I was actually part of the theater as a stage art staff member for one of those avant-garde theater companies. I always wondered if it would be possible to create a new art form that interactively changes meaning according to the audience without the actors’ performances.
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In 1994, I started Aozora (Blue Sky) Art on the streets of Tokyo as an audience interactive participation project. The themes were colorful families, diverse marriages, LGBTQ and other social issues, so I used a lot of pop, friendly, manga-like art styles to make it accessible to people who were not interested in art usually.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
N/A
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to the Covid-19 crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
I have been thinking these themes since March just when Covid19 era started. I saw many artists post their sketches, photographs of empty city, and also art pieces they worked on during quarantine on SNS. I realized that I am not a type of artist who continues creating own artworks whatever happened. Rather, opposite. My area Queens, NYC was a top Covid19 effected neighborhoods in USA at that time. I started making masks with my leftover materials for essential workers, and immigrant families in our communities. I also read there are many people including undocumented people who can not get federal check or unemployed insurance. One of my friends started a community service project that distributes free fresh grocery bags to such people/families in emergency. I started to volunteer work to the project. In fact, my family lost most jobs since March, and haven’t recover from it yet. I connected with many local communities through donating my handmade face masks. Local garden, local farm, local kitchen, art groups that started to distribute a free food boxes, Burma group supporting refugees, and many individuals who helps seniors, and families in difficult times.
Making masks with a sewing machine is a simple work. I felt it was like a meditation, or, I was letting my thoughts wander, especially about my art projects that were supposed happen this spring-fall, but were all canceled in this year. All materials of masks I made, were from the Materials For The Arts, a NYC’s organization that recycles many materials for artists’ projects. More than 70 kinds of cotton fabrics I had were new and very beautiful, which were donated from Broadway fashion industry. This reminds me the industry announced that they postponed all shows until end of May 2021 already.
(from Jeanine) Dear Rica,
Thank you very much for sharing these insights into your work. Many of your projects made over the years are large-scale, participatory, and very much related to people in a very direct way. We tare hrilled about the ‘Long Drawing’, which you created especially in the context of ‘OnBigDrawings’.
This piece is mainly made using digital tools and methods, and on a relatively small scale it manages to present a rich assembly of characters, text, storylines, and elements with symbolic meaning, such as the hidden form of the Amabie sea monster that can heal disease. Many aspects of this work only reveal themselves on close inspection and through zooming into the piece, thus reveal further stories and imaginary worlds.

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Could you imagine doing more work in this new, digital way in the future, and could this different engagement with scale (not life-size, but enlarged by zooming in), have an impact on how you will be working in the near future?
Thank you very much. This is the first experimental work I created, and I made a lot of mistakes before I finished it because this was my first time using this software and I was not used to it. However, in the process of making my work, it was a big deal for me to discover the possibility of creating a layered work of art by zooming in and out of it. As an artist, I would like to pursue this idea further and create new works of art.
But, I’m starting to think a little differently about how I’m going to spend the last 25 years of my life as a human being, compared to how I once thought of such things as an artist. I’ve decided to embark on a life’s work to help women in Japan. When I was young in Japan, I suffered in Japan’s awful, male- dominated society and created artworks that defined it as a problem, with themes including unfair marriage and family systems, gender, and sexual freedom. Now that I’m older, I’m considering a different approach. Specifically, to fund women’s support groups in Japan with grants from international foundations. The Japanese government has a very small budget for women’s aid. In reality, the money goes to men, with the budget going to many male-dominated organizations under the guise of “supporting women.” In October 2020, the suicide rate of Japanese women increased by 183% from last year. Japan ranks 121st out of 153 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report 2020. It’s getting worse and worse. This must be changed. I’d like to learn grant writing for funding (I’m actually already on the funding team for the local Lifeline Grocery Package project and I’m writing paperwork) and put it to greater use for real organizations that support women’s aid. When I was a high school student, I saw the “Peace Poster Exhibition” at the Tokyo University of the Arts’ school festival and thought, “I wish I could do something like this to make the world a better place with art,” so I attended and graduated from the university, and I have continued to work as an art artist, including the creation of manga, ever since. But after 25 years, I felt that what I had done wasn’t enough or that nothing had changed. I wrote about that realization and disappointment in my report, “Manga Comics of Aliens in NY.” Moreover, the pandemic has not ended, so I’m going to continue to learn grant writing instead of making artwork.
English proofreading by Ashley Matarama
ありがとうございます。今回の作品は実験的に作成した最初のもので、初めて使うソフトウェアに慣れな
い事もあり出来上がるまでにたくさんの失敗をしました。しかし平面なのにもかかわらずズームする事で
立体的に奥深く作品を作れる可能性を作成の過程で発見できたのは私にとっては大きな事でした。作家と
してはもっと追求して新しい作品を作って見たいなあという欲望が出てきます。
しかし作家以前に、人間として残りの人生の約25年をどんな風に使うかちょっと違うことを考え始めています。それは日本の女性を助ける仕事です。日本のひどい男尊女卑社会に若い時の私は苦しみ、そしてそれを問題定義するアート作品を作成してきました。テーマは結婚や家族制度、ジェンダーや性の自由などです。
しかし歳を重ねた今は違うアプローチを考えています。具体的には世界の財団からの返済不要の投資を得て日本の女性支援団体に資金繰りする事です。日本の政府は女性支援のための予算がとても少ないのです。実際は「女性を支援するため」という口実だけの男性が中心の団体に予算をつけて男性にお金が回っています。今年の10月は日本女性の自殺率は前年よりも83%増加しました。今だに日本は女性の地位がGlobal Gender Gap Report 2020で153国中、121位です。どんどん悪くなっています。資金繰りのためのGrant Writing を学び(実はもう地域のLifeline Grocery Package projectのfunding team に入って書類を書いてはいるのですが)さらに大きく実践したいと思っています。私は高校生の時に東京藝術大学の学園祭で「平和のためのポスター展」を見て“こんな風にアートで世界を良いところにする仕事が出来たらいいな”と思って大学に入り卒業し、その後も漫画を含むアート作家活動を続けてきました。しかし自分がやってきた事があまりに無力というか、何も変わってないなあと25年やってきて感じてしまいました。その気づきや落胆などはAliens in NYのレポート漫画の中にも書いています。そんなわけでコロナがまだ終わっていない今、まずは私は作品つくりではなく勉強にあてるつもりです。

© FK & The Artists, 2020
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O n B ig D r a w i n g s
ART AT HOME
20 2 0

Jeanine Riedl
When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
I started drawing when I was two. I inherited my attraction from my family, especially my father.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
I think that idea is important insofar as artists and educators preserve allegiance to deep looking and observation. Drawing is one place where we can practice this allegiance.
What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?
Most drawings are good drawings. I think drawings are less good when they are too careful or oppressive.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
I still don’t understand what process means in relationship to art-making. All art-making is process- oriented. Do you mean slow? Iterative?
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
Big drawings often feel more assertive and demanding of a painting or painting-adjacent conversation. Small drawings often feel more scrappy, idiosyncratic, notational, or diaristic.
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
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I want people to see my work and at least feel challenged, activated, or turned on. Even better if they feel an affirming connection between seemingly disparate emotional or social realms, and thus part of a wider dissident circle. Maybe they’ll think, “damn, she’s a freak and so am I.” Or “wow– maybe I’m more of a freak than I thought, cause this speaks to me.”
My work is about many things but one key theme is queer knowledge, in which an analysis of power forms and flows from both sexual, sensory, and relational exchange, as well as the study of history and contemporary politics. I want people to feel the tension and complexity of this in my work, and connect with me on it.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
Are you saying the ‘personal’ cannot be art? One, Feminism 101 (Carol Hanisch, Combahee River Collective, Kimberly Crenshaw) tells us otherwise (for me, the personal is political and therefore the personal is art) and two, the mainstream art economy has an obsession with the ephemera of high- grossing canonized artists, which means that capitalists consider the ‘personal’ to be art when it’s profitable. So the ‘personal’ as art is affirmed from the bottom and the top!
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
In my experience the current student generation is somewhat influenced by these cultures but I see so many influences– it’s just not monolithic… I am not sure I can identify a central trend among students, except for the influence of the internet.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
Painting is more sculptural, object-oriented, and expensive. Drawing is cheaper and more rooted in translation and problem-solving; translating what the artist sees and feels, and for me especially there is a circular satisfaction in translating observed realities in my environment to the paper, and then translating internal fantasy to the reality of the paper/ drawing plane. The “real” moves in both directions in drawing. Observational drawing is also a form of control. Control of narrative, control of circumstances, surroundings. Finally, almost everyone draws as children, and drawing is materially accessible to most people. Definitely the peoples’ medium lol!
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
Definitely not.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
This statement is offensively broad and subjective. I recently saw a collection of Ukiyo-e prints that were most definitely not celebrating emptiness. Also, I do not seek emptiness in my work. I am a maximalist.
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
Again, I reject this false binary. The intimate and personal is social, and it can be participatory. Here are some excerpts from things I’ve written in the past on this subject:
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My work is a translation of political and sexual desire. I am concerned with the limits of fantasy in the context of an oppressive social landscape. Strange concoctions and messy logic emerge when I explore those limits. In other words, what is the viability of a feminism based in sex, magic, and friendship when it trickles or explodes into the cold uncompromising outside world?
I am on a quest to realize the conceptual potential of cartooning and protest art. These concerns contain a broader and queerer question: what are the limits of fantasy in the context of an oppressive social landscape?
I love comics and satirical cartoons and propaganda and am curious about how artists expand and build on these forms. In some ways, my concern with the limits of fantasy are soothed by my refusal to accept any limits to drawing. What does a conceptual political cartoon look like? Can a performance become a drawing or can a drawing become a ritual? Can a video become a protest sign?
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
Yes- students should be empowered to build their observational drawing skills and fantasy drawing skills in parallel.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
The intersecting crises of covid-19 (new) and white supremacy (old) have had me putting my energy elsewhere. I’ve continued to make my work, but I’ve also been doing more organizing and working on an animation project related to the first covid death at Cook County Jail and the campaign to end money bond.
I believe that artists can use their gifts to resist the rightwing capitalist agenda (or the moderate neoliberal capitalist agenda! → both of which conspired to bring us the current situation) and/or artists can do that parallel to their art practices, which is sometimes more fruitful because they can process their idiosyncratic and soul-specific concerns without worrying about attaching a political thrust which may not be directly related to their weird and special work. I love some good movement graphics but I also love when artists make the freaky shit they wanna make and sell it so they can eat, pay rent, and give some money to prison abolitionists and Black Trans mutual aid projects etc. etc.
Hi, Ruby. Hope you are well. Really have enjoyed doing a deeper dive into your work. I do have a follow- up query regarding the breadth, scope of your work, which is below.
Thank you Jeanine, and thank you for your careful read and pointed questions.

I felt very aware of various forces and struggles at work—relational, economic, political and
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environmental—i.e., natural or organic. The visible struggle—or tension—with an “antagonistic” force, if you will, is expressed in the art processes—attempting to “quiet,” Graham, through drawing him to demise, or attempting to “control” water. Different “forces,” of course, have different degrees of cognitive, emotional, physical tension that become expressed in the works and medium. Can you expand upon the relationship of specific struggles with the degree of tension experienced and expressed in a work(s)? For instance, what was the personal experience from Graham start to finish. Was there a “release” at its end so that you knew you were finished? Was there a physical or emotional building of conflict, tension? Climax to resolution?
I knew I was finished when I made 110 drawings because that was the correct number to fill the gallery wall. At about 20 I started to really know his face and at 75 I started to feel a surprising sense of empathy for him. At 105 I was sick of him again. All of my work has moments of being painstaking and cathartic in its production, regardless of the subject matter. I don’t think that the tension within the content necessarily influences the degree to which I struggle with making it.
How does this work’s tension and struggle differ from other work, or does it? How does a particular “force” and “tension” influence the choice of medium? Choice of drawing over video?
No, I would say that the consistent tension in my work is between fantasy and reality and that medium and subject matter are always inextricably linked– one does not proceed the other.
If you need further clarification let me know. Struggles are personal as well as societal. I am curious about the artist’s own struggle with depicting her, your, subject matter; subject matter that also has societal significance. Be well,
Jeanine

rubyt.net

On Big Drawings – SOKOLOW_TEXT 7/23/23, 12:04 PM

O n B ig D r a w i n g s
ART AT HOME
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Friedhard Kiekeben
When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
I started drawing as a kid. I gravitated to it because it was an immediate and inexpensive medium. And I’m still wrapped up in it for these reasons. I appreciate it because I can do it on my own terms, anywhere. There is no need for expensive materials nor a special lab.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
I think the idea of mastery is not so relevant to drawing today. In fact, I feel that the word suggests limitations and promotes a false sense of value with regard to what is and what is not a legitimate drawing. Certainly, a person can master the medium in a limited technical sense, possibly in relation to the drawings of old masters, but are those drawings interesting? Do they explore anything new or are they just replicas of past artists’ drawings?
What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?
A good drawing or a bad drawing has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with whether or not it holds a viewer’s attention. If I see a drawing and I find myself continuing to look and think about it, then I would consider it a good drawing.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
Process is huge for me. I spend a lot of time cutting apart drawings and shapes and moving those elements around on a larger sheet of paper. I find a lot of joy and frustration in this collage process. It takes forever to finally find a composition that seems right. If I didn’t go through this process of cutting drawings apart, if I just settled on the very first composition I came up with, the length of the drawing process for me would be much shorter and wouldn’t feel as challenging.
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings /
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or small drawings, and why does it matter?
I think about the history of drawing, which is really all about the small preparatory sketch for a painting or a sculpture. Those small preparatory sketches, are rarely exhibited and almost always in dimly lit, low-ceilinged spaces in encyclopedic art museums. Of course this is mainly about the fragility of those materials, but it’s also apparent that those old, small drawings are never considered as important as painting or sculpture. Big, contemporary drawings challenge this history by inhabiting space on a large scale. I’ve been aware of this when making and exhibiting large drawings. Currently I’m focused on making small drawings. There’s something really wonderful about working at a small scale which allows a drawing, or parts of it, to evolve on a living room coffee table or a kitchen counter.
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
I think my dream is always for another person to spend time looking at a drawing I’ve made, or at least to not walk past it so fast.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beer mat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
I think they can be personal and be art. If an artist sees their scribble as art, then it’s art. If the artist doesn’t think of it as art, but others view it as art, then it’s art.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
I can relate to pretty much any mode of drawing if there’s something new in the work, but if it’s an obvious replica of someone else’s work out there (unless it’s an intentional replica of another artist’s work, à la Sherrie Levine), then I’m not that interested in it.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
Aside from differences in materials, painting and drawing both have a lot of baggage, but I think the baggage associated with painting is a lot more restrictive in an “everything’s been done” kind of way. Drawing, on the other hands, has this art historical inferiority complex, but that just makes it the scrappier medium, with more room for growth and new discoveries. Despite this, drawing is still the underdog of the art world when considering how auction houses and galleries price drawings (in comparison to paintings).
In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
No, drawing can be about so many things, and not just lines.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
I don’t think about emptiness. I’m definitely trying to make something solid and tactile when I’m working on a drawing.
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ artform, yet a lot of contemporary
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art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
I don’t know if I’d consider my practice to have a strong social or participatory dimension, beyond some earlier experiments with large-scale, text-driven non-linear narratives wherein viewers/readers could choose to read the story in whatever order they might wish to read it (if they read it). The impetus for this was a strong interest in post-modern literature and the ways in which various authors such as Helen Oyeyemi, Ali Smith and Don DeLillo have played with the conventions of traditional storytelling.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
Absolutely, I think there can be other ways to teach drawing. I teach a drawing course at Northwestern University called Obsessive Investigation which emphasizes idiosyncratic research for generating drawing and writing instead of focusing on the technical.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to Covid-19 and the global crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials?
Covid certainly has had an impact on my practice. I am working at a smaller scale. I’m also working out of a little home studio- a room on top of the roof of my home- instead of walking an hour to my studio, which is in a private space but has a shared bathroom and hallways. I’ve also shifted away from making narrative drawings about politicians, dictators, cult leaders and other public figures who abuse power. I’ve always been intrigued with the people, structures and organizations that openly and secretly possess power, but because this is now what almost every news story is about, continuing to make work about these themes seems redundant. I feel like I’m adding to the ugliness and polarization that is so sharp and present. So I’ve moved into more benign topics such as architecture, which might still nod to prior content, but in more subtle ways. I’ve also gone back to focusing on drawing basics- shapes, color, line, composition, etc. I’m finding joy in this. I think it’s really important to have some source of joy during a pandemic/economic recession.
Your own questions and concerns…
I’d be interested in knowing how the other artists on the website view the relationship of drawing to printmaking. How important is the idea of the one-of-a-kind mark or an original drawing?
Also, how do artists know when a drawing is done?

On Big Drawings – WALLERS_TEXT 7/22/23, 5:22 PM

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Jeanine Riedl
When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
When I was a kid I was more interested in making things. I was fascinated with cameras as objects and also in the magic of photography so I was interested in trying to build a camera.
My exposure to drawing was through illustrations and cartoons. On pool night, to keep me occupied while the adults had a little fun, my dad would sit a cereal box in front of me and tell me to draw/copy what was on it. It wasn’t magical for me.
On the other hand, my Uncle Art’s cameras and the photo slide show he put together every Christmas offered a different kind of feeling; curiosity and wonder.
Decades later I came to drawing as a way to ground myself after a loss. At that time I had a difficult time concentrating so I took comfort keeping my world focused in front of me on a 13” x 10” sheet of paper. This process yielded a group of drawings called Things That Sting, a precursor to the cut outs.
What do you make of the traditional idea of ‘mastery’, which despite a lot of innovation, continues to have an ongoing association with drawing.
I honestly feel uncomfortable with that term and its associations.
What is a good drawing? What is a bad drawing?
I don’t want to evaluate or debate whether a drawing is good or bad. It’s more a feeling of interest or disinterest for me.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
Very Important as some of my drawings take a year to complete.
The main theme of our project is ‘OnBigDrawings’. What do you make of big drawings / or small drawings, and why does it matter?
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I make both large-scale installations and intricate works on paper; this is exactly what I do and how I work.
What kind of relationship do you want your work to have with its audience?
My work changes as viewers move around it—the movement of bodies around my work is essential to the experience of viewing—and as light illuminates areas at different angles. In this way, my work is constantly shifting, revealing depths, complexities, and vulnerabilities that elicit physical awareness and corporeal empathy in the viewer.
What do you make of small, intimate drawings, sketchbook pages, beermat sketches, and scribbles. Are these sheets more ‘personal’ or can they be art?
Sometimes the immediacy and freshness of these kinds of drawings contain or emit an energy that is impossible to duplicate in more finished work. I like that energy and think it is important.
The current student generation is hugely influenced by graffiti and Manga culture, as well as a desire to represent things in more classical ways. How do you relate to this trend?
I definitely like some graffiti and some of Manga culture, but I don’t see it as an influence in my work.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
I have no intellectual interest in comparing the differences between painting and drawing. In 2010/2011 MOMA in New York staged its biggest drawing exhibition of the 20th
century, and it was called ‘On Line’. Do you think drawing is necessarily just about ‘lines’?
Lines are one way to look at drawings, sure. I think drawings are about marks, smudges, erasure, and pressure.
Asian drawings are known to celebrate a notion of ’emptiness’. Do you seek ’emptiness’ in your work?
I wouldn’t say emptiness. I wouldn’t say chaos either. If I’m “seeking” anything its an accumulation of energy.
Traditional drawing is a more intimate and ‘personal’ art form, yet a lot of contemporary art practice seeks a more social and participatory dimension. How is this reflected in your projects and drawings?
My work falls into the categories of intimate and personal, but it is not at all traditional in form. I also ask the viewer to actively participate by moving around the work.
But if you mean “social and participatory” in the context of sharing works on social media platforms, inviting responses, or in the context of collaboration, I rarely work that way. I tend to work with less chatter, less feedback.
Drawing is often treated as a very technical medium in art education (especially in US art schools). Do you think there could be other ways to teach drawing?
I can’t speak to this because I don’t teach drawing. I have no idea what’s going on currently in art education. I hope there are a lot of different approaches.
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I especially hope drawing traditions outside of White European cultures are being taught in the US.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do the artists respond to the Covid-19 crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials?
In the beginning of the COVID crisis it was hard to concentrate. Then George Floyd was murdered and it was impossible to concentrate. During the first surge of COVID and the call for racial justice, my wife and I were also in the midst of moving to New Mexico. So the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, the countless murders of people of color, the uprisings, moving, reckoning with the privileges of my whiteness, the election…all of this has made it impossible to concentrate.
As a human, I am responding to more than just the pandemic. The pandemic shed light on the “old situation” and all of it impacts my creative practice.
Your own questions and concerns…
It’s been difficult to work on this project. As the months wear on I have grown bored and disinterested in the online presence. Haven’t we all? I crave the company of a person in the studio looking at my work. I crave looking at work in person…especially work that is about contemplation….I just want to look and be in space with art…without wall text…without screens.
From Jeanine, Hi Christine,
I love your work. And, I absolutely “feel” the similarities between you and Agnes Martin. It’s a serene experience–transcendental, really. There’s simplicity, but also a depth and detail that perhaps creates this sense of balance and peace, which pulls the viewer into the work. Whatever it is, I love looking at the work.
When I look at several pieces of your work, there seems to be an interplay between texture–the rough edges of a cut out or the smooth shiny surface of a wire, light and dark, and shadows or shading. Can you speak about how you use natural light to complement some of your drawings; that is, if you do. When seeing “Cut Outs,” I couldn’t help but notice how shadows against the wall as well as on the paper itself effected the works.
All best, Jeanine

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Thanks Jeanine. Exactly. The shadows, the play of light (both natural and artificial), the translucence of the paper after it’s been scarred and cut, the reveal of color, texture, form… I would say natural light is more like an element of my drawings and installations. I specifically seek out spaces that offer the capacity for natural light experiences both in my studio and exhibition spaces. It’s the light in these spaces that becomes the qualifying factor. The way my work interacts with light and shadow are key dimensions to experiencing and understanding the work. So “complimenting” suggests an added bonus when in fact the play of light is a conscious decision. My methods and materials are intentional. I’m intentionally considering light…the pause and absence of light. There is a thrill when light appears and disappears: making elements of my work visible or less visible or barely visible. I love waiting for each of those moments. Like my installation and sculptural work, the cut outs need an element of light. The pieces change as you move around them. The experience of it is fleeting. If you stand and look at it from one side, it looks eaten away. On the other side, it looks completely different, maybe solid. Previously unseen color pops up, some orange reveals itself. I am interested in the cut outs changing and shifting and holding the wall as you move around the space. Almost hypnotically holding the wall. I feel z. and p. are successful examples of that. I don’t always have the option of natural light so the work needs to stand up in artificial light as well. This was the case at the Ralph Arnold Gallery at Loyola University in Chicago. During the day I placed the work where it could harness daylight and in the evening it was lit artificially. Thinking about this transition was interesting to me as I imagined sunlight piercing and spilling behind the piece during the day, and by night, the gallery lights glistening off or splintering across the graphite grays of the surface creating texture and a kind of shimmering…

On Big Drawings – WOODWARD_TEXT 7/23/23, 12:02 PM

O n B ig D r a w i n g s
ART AT HOME
20 2 0

Friedhard Kiekeben
When did you start drawing? Were you naturally attracted to this medium, or is this a more recent concern and engagement?
Like most kids, when I was little all I wanted to do was make drawings. I couldnʼt stop, itʼs all I looked forward to. I made drawings at home, through dinner, at school through my classes. When I realized I could communicate something with them, Drawing became the center most orchard in my world. It wasnʼt until an art class in community college in Rochester that Drawing was presented to me as a preliminary step to Painting and not its own, autonomous way of working. I had a hard time with that. I tried to make the leap, letting one become the other but on the other side of that leap Iʼd end up missing something, leaving something behind. In the act of painting something vital was always edited away, something immediate and of the moment and understated and inelegant. I spent years trying to make that leap, all the way through grad school. But I kept finding Drawing when Iʼd go out walking, Iʼd find it in writing, as something happening to the buildings on Kenmore Street, near Montrose, Uptown. There the world seemed to be resuming and exaggerating the buildings back into something else out of the reach of Architecture. The buildingʼs, symbols –– which they are covered in and perhaps may not have been there when the building initially went up –– seemed to be dropping away. The building was becoming something else. And there Iʼd see Drawing, which was nothing to do with Painting. I live in New York now, there arenʼt many buildings here in the neighborhood that do this, but you can sometimes see it in Riverside Park. There is a productive tension suspended in the park, along the path parallel to Riverside Drive. That tension is enacted by simultaneously establishing and stepping through a particular identity of space, of differentiation, like mapping a little drop of ink in a bowl of milk, which you can only access through walking it out. Even the trees seemed to confirm it.
How would you define the fundamental differences between painting and drawing? (A quote: ‘A drawing is a painting made with less paint’, … Henry Matisse).
Iʼm not sure I could define a fundamental difference between the two, but I donʼt think itʼs necessarily in the materials. As far as Drawing goes, the materials you are using are irrelevant except insofar as they express certain tensions between not only what youʼre working with but what youʼre working on. Maybe the difference is that the materials go hand-in-hand with the subject matter; one guides the other.
Itʼs always important to look at other artists. What is Julie Mehretu doing in her work? Or Sara Sze? Both of these artists are making Drawings but with different materials and in very different ways and with very different ends. In the explosive, accumulative, catalytic harmony of her mark making, Mehretuʼs work interprets the potentiality of becoming. Her gigantic, architectonic work (somewhere in Harlem in a church) is
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the potential to realize being -the pure profusion of being- through an endless contingent weather of configurations over the surface in the here and now. This is Drawing. I saw Sara Szeʼs last two shows at Tanya Bonakdar and in each I felt like I had walked into The Poetics of Space, into a Drawing arcading around me, little internal agile engines of differentiation. The image of her installation, or sculpture (I am really at a loss about what to call it), sparkling with conflict and ladders and shattered and torn images and projections lifted the room onto an almost transparent stage, it was like peering into the homelessness and formlessness -the great burden of having already lost so much- so central to our collective current experience. The installations spilled out over the floor, onto the walls, into the rafters of the gallery, it transformed the room into an image both extremely personally historical as well as cosmological and fabulous. In Szeʼs work a coded reef of vacillating subjects -transformation and fixity, the various and varying, disorientation and relocation- each endlessly repeated in spatial capture. The Drawing was in there somewhere, slipping through passages. Or Sonya Blesofsky. Her work at Spencer Brownstone last year had filed architectural elements and anthropological tropes, down to fossils, to a chill, almost erasing them in space. But walking through the show -even the crane in your neck could feel their tectonic immutability, it was like a drained lake of white air. Blesofskyʼs work keeps history somewhere above us, somewhere in the space, charged with symbolic, even metaphysical implications. Her work simultaneously harnesses and exceeds the architectural elements use (this is where her Drawings are), as if these arcs and columns and supports, unbound and reduced, are here only images caught mid-stride leaving the world architecture laid for them and revealing instead the something like the figure, or the little crane in your neck. The Drawing is there setting a double task in motion: 1) the repurposing of an architectural element to a symbol, and 2) the symbol to a kind of document where it can participate with space, submerged in the dynamic flow of the language and time of a given room. All these cross-histories, counter-histories, there really is no model, only modeling. The drawing is there, in how the artist worked their way through their work and left indelible traces of themselves along the way, like they are their own Beloved in the moment of their moment.
How important is a notion of ‘process’ in your drawing practice?
Process might be everything to my work. And this is where Drawing gets weird and tricky. What Sze and Mehretu are so good at is making available, in how they handle their material, very certain tensions (ideological, cultural) latent in their worksʼ forms which, by the very act of configuring them, allow these tensions the potential to pass fluidly into other, further (re)configurations. This process is documented in the form itself, broadcast there in the object (indeed, its so much more interesting to look at an artwork that is a document of itself getting up on the wall than a finished product). Itʼs a transmission, also a transformation. Thatʼs Drawing, the Drawing process. Itʼs also an act of seeing, of looking. Drawing reveals the difficulty – and the possibility- of the form (or the body, the building, the fossil, the lake, etc) on its way through a transformation.
My own work is obviously rooted in architecture, thatʼs where my concerns have always been. My work looks at common architectural details, basically sculptural nodes, fixed repositories within which an invisible library of societal identities (class, racial, economic) intersect and dispatch. However, in Drawing these details out, these sculptural nodes, they are changed, and by removing them from their context they are entered into an act of reclaiming. Here the relationship the detail has with its place in the world (that long reach of spatial and cultural identities youʼll find in Riverside Park one day) is maintained, but at the expense of a gutting. Architecture is incapable of dealing with history, though it constantly returns to it, measures it, remeasures it, mourns it, puts it back and forgets, traverses it into other bodies, returns to measure it again, and memorializes it. My work is an attempt to break with the past in order to cope with the present, an arrangement that allows us to respond to history, and it to us. (A tall order but thatʼs at the heart of it all.) Again, a reconfiguration of architectural language and energies (ideas are energies), energies built into the material and transformed so that something not visible at first or ever before is reconfigured into a readable, legible image (or fossil, or doorway, or walk). This is what Drawing does. And the process is the best part.
One question foremost on my mind, was: how do artists respond to the Covid-19 crisis, and do you think the new situation has an impact on your creative practice, your exhibitions and projects, and the nature of work being affected by working from home for extended periods of time? Perhaps artists start making smaller scale, more intimate works, made from simpler and easily accessible materials ?
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Yes, Covid has impacted my work. And in a way that is so beguiling and strange and otherly I canʼt get my mind into it. Time seems unpinned, unbearable, I canʼt remember things very clearly. March and April of this year feel like another lifetime. Thereʼs the obvious distress and sleeplessness and worry that comes with living and working in a Pandemic, but then thereʼs this other starry trauma unfolding in everything, like an assemblage of tenses clicking in and out of place. Everyone I know is going through this, too, it seems. As far as the studio goes, Iʼve never worked so hard in my life but I canʼt get anything done. Iʼm an essential worker, and my studio isnʼt far from my nine-to-five, and so Iʼm one of the lucky ones
thatʼs been able to stay employed throughout everything, nonetheless itʼs certainly taken its toll. Most of the art work Iʼve looked at lately is just trying to get away from all this. Thereʼs a cheeky escapism to it thatʼs not at all subtle. Heavy-handed, cooped up, self-deprecating jokey stuff made by someone deadly serious, working awash in the grayness of what it means to be holed up in the studio right now, let alone laugh right now. I know itʼs been relevant for a while, but I see so many artists using humor in their paintings that I think itʼs telling of a different, depleting kind of pain. I think we are going to see work for a long time that intensely, relentlessly, shamelessly looks inward. A lot of my friends had some serious time to be in the studio, just working and watching helplessly as the world burned around us. We are going to see art that grapples with our own lip-servicing ineptness to instantly effect real change in a time of actual social justice; work that fumbles with not knowing whether what an artist does is hurting or helping. Moreover, the art world is so undone into a million pieces no one knows who is going to put it back together or how. And while we all know it canʼt go back together the way it was, there doesnʼt seem to be any other way.
I have a friend that works in Art Handling, and that industry saw a bump when collectors began moving their work out of New York City. He said heʼd never been so busy crating and shipping and driving work Upstate to storage. Wherever that work is headed, draining art out of the art world is like sucking momentum from a tossed cinder block. I think itʼs going to have very material and lasting effects on an economy that so many of us are grinding every day for the opportunity to dip into. I think we are going to see a much different, much more fiscally conservative art world, and those opportunities will thin out for a while.
But no oneʼs going anywhere (where would we go?), artists are still here working, and so we are also going to see a world insanely joyous for the sake of joy and making art (why else would we stay here?); an art world high on working and contributing, with itʼs shoulder pressed so hard to the wheel that we may be able to prop one other up for a while, this way we donʼt have to sleep with our heads in the mud.
I think when galleries do open regularly again people will want to go look at art that knocks them out. Theyʼll want big, bold, triumphant moves from painting and sculpture. Something to get them washed out of their bodies and feeling the world around them again. I recently saw the Suzan Frecon show at Zwirner and I was so grateful to be in a gallery again, I had not been to a gallery in months, floating around room after room and standing in front of good paintings, like a communion. It was overwhelming. I left feeling like I had just witnessed something special, and hadnʼt realized how starved I was for that feeling.
Thank you so much for sharing these profound insights into your practice. Having got to know your work in 2013, there are two topics that keep coming to my mind: ‘Scale’, and ‘Painting’. You are writing extensively about your love of drawing (and the precision that goes with that), yet I find there are so many aspects in your work that are painterly, and sometimes also intensely colorful and chromatic, thus highly subjective and non-linear.
Could you share your thoughts on what you make of the medium of painting, both as a contemporary practice, and as an art historical form?

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There are moments in my work, throughout the years, where paint appears suddenly, thatʼs true. And here itʼs important to note that I approach paint in a way thatʼs different than Painting. There is an age old and drubby Cat and Mouse game of semantics that pops up every time we try and draw a definitive line between drawing and painting and what really constitutes either, and I donʼt mean to get into all that here (the differences are so auspicious that as you zoom in youʼll notice that their boundaries actually overlap more often than not). Suffice it to say, Iʼm not interested in making Paintings. Paint is a material, simply put, and thatʼs how I approach it. But I know itʼs not that easy, no one gets to just use paint.
In my work, for a particular effect, Iʼll use paint the same way I use spackle or tree limbs or graphite. The important thing is that paint is loaded to the brim with magically effortless and far-reaching cultural implications, and using paint means gathering about you at once the whole of those implications (see Christopher Wool). Even alluding to Painting (see Max Schubert or Sara Elise Hall) means that your decisions, your moves across a surface, will crackle with those implications. In turn, and perhaps not surprisingly, deliberately not using paint will get you the same thing (see Heidi Bucher).
When I began using architectural details I found I could prompt an inextinguishably complex cultural language of place, of time, and of building –recognition requiring as it does silent repetition. What the power of these architectural details suggest is that the cultural movements that evoked them are generated out of sentiments expressed so long ago that theyʼve become general, banal; theyʼve become common, and, moreover, durably extensive. But, like I said earlier, in drawing them something changed that; they werenʼt so much repeated again (no, they can never repeat again) as they were re-articulated anew. Even the most simple constructions seemed to re-define in the heat of the act. As formal hooks their transition from the faces of buildings to surfaces like paper and tarp crested them with a different kind of energy, and as a subject matter this exposed that under the detailsʼ sleepy decorative purpose there lived a world of signs still very much alive and vectored by economic and political forces. These details, these architectural ornaments, furthermore, have a kind of new old-ness, a white washed catalogue-ready everyday-ness to them that seems to remove them out of the arch of a particular time and place, or a particular history. (In fact, they are inherently characterized by their capacity for mass production.) However, as the detail makes its way from the building to the paper, that non-specific, oft-replicated, almost commercial idiosyncrasy is disabled and offset by a process uniquely human and handmade. The detailsʼ ahistorical structure is charged open by rather rawly unforgiving industrial materials like tarps, discarded wood, construction-grade adhesives, and a kind of clawing search for the form. (Both of these things, I think itʼs important to note, are constituted by, and so carry with them, a prior context). The dying have indeed chosen the living world for text. Here, no matter how hard I push the form back into itself, no matter how hard I try to make it right, the regimented mass-symmetry of the detail comes into contact with and tenses against the resolute and simple constraints of the material, and across the surface a searching, stuttering play of decisions is recorded there in the Drawing as accurately as the detail itself. This breaks the detail from the structure of pattern and lends it to a sense of growth and movement. In the walking, a bodily and tectonic relationship appears to guide the drawing.
Paint sometimes makes its way into play and the entire thing changes, the load shifts. I used to think that color is its own identity, subject to its own laws. And as far as architecture is concerned, to a undeniable extent perhaps more than any other material, color has had important ramifications for it that are not necessarily related to form and proportion (or scale, as you put it, Friedhard), but rather to atmosphere and effect, and to something more emotional. But I no longer see Painting as some autonomous phenomenon, insofar as its absorbed the world as much its been absorbed by it.
What color does in my work (and Iʼm interchanging color and paint here because I approach paint as a material not as a medium –I realize they are not necessarily the same thing) is show that a kind of mourning in layers, layers without depth, bare layers of surface, are building. Like a characterized patterned energy. Iʼll often spend a year or so chasing something down, working my way around it, taking it apart, making drawing after drawing, and in the end I may necessarily need paint, with all its skin and speed, to drag the thing Iʼm getting at out into the world.
The work youʼre referring to, the “painterly and sometimes intensely colorful and chromatic”, usually comes to me all at once, otherwise I donʼt try. It takes forever to see those pieces, in whole, but once I do they are done. I just have to wait them out to carve them out. Works like Untitled (June 30th), My Dream of Your Dream, and Untitled (November 30th) each came out of
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a moment where what I wanted to say with the weight of the room, a moment where the body in movement there, in calling from itself a way to guide the work out, was blocked, all of it blocked, where piling beneath the thing you know, have always known, is a centerless open volume, like a moon, or like a sea of steps, wasnʼt it always there? and where working is just beating it back amidst all that searching and measuring and walking, time collecting the reeds of an irresolvable loss, clacking. And the huge overlaying of color and material, all of it somehow a familiar shape –a mattress cover, blankets, an old tarp, a pattern, all of it touched endlessly and blocked away. Kept away. Not any longer accessible. And all you can do is stand in place, maybe circle the inlet cooly for some time, but there isnʼt any way back in.
Iʼm constantly looking at Richard Serra, at Anselm Kiefer for clues into this world, at how Doris Salcedo lobs transactional items at us through the mists and matter of material agency. And somehow lands them every time perfectly in the shell of each of our laps.
What Serraʼs work requires of us is that we move about his sculptures, absorb them by allowing them to reframe the room theyʼre situated in and test their massive, irregular, brutal bodies against the perception of our own, which then moves them out of pictorial allusion (Painting) and into actual space. Somehow, however, for all their juggernaut presences, his sculptures seem withdrawn, familiarly sacred, cruel nearly, like a prototype. And they are as preoccupied with Painting as they are with the rival architecture whose bodies they subsume. Indeed, Serraʼs work uses a particular language (and by language I mean a function that connects images and structure) but, even as he separates his work form them, itʼs one thatʼs undeniably rooted in Painting and architecture. Here, a pool of compositional units is facilitated by a way to regard the universe: as a dream.
The nature of Serraʼs work belongs to an ideological framework which seeks to recover architecture as a collective experience, but in the space of that thinking, in making the work and doing it or undoing it endlessly, in the inevitable indeterminacy in breaking it down and building it back, in walking and changing the paths and processes of works like Switch, in being devastatingly alone inside that very sculpture, there is a rhythm of being tracking the effort in it all coming together to meet the world.
Anselm Kiefer too uses a kind of material strategy that disarms and repositions traditional concepts of architecture and Painting, often using the medium as the subject itself. This is essentially collage, which pivots the work of art into an object, or a sign. In his case, a constellation of signs.
In works like Drache, and wohin wir uns wenden Gewitter der Rosen, Kiefer arranges a dense commotion of material like mud, shellac, furniture, unearthed fabric, huge found books, and woozy battered garden things into a diorama of ringing kinetic pressure. Even language itself is a material (though never begets a poem). What do these things mean together, they build up with such primacy and tension; what can be taken from their placement here? Like a theme, their reappearance and repetition across works produces a bizarre difference among them, and textures and rhythms become temporal, spatial, and material organizations. Kieferʼs sculptures (or Paintings) seem constructions, or surfaces for projection halfway to witnessing themselves dissolving rather than any kind of discovery. None of these objects embedded in the work any longer have an origin, they are on the cusp of a long history of memory, of perception, they are in the world without coming from it, which ultimately allows them to serve as a screen for the deployment of the sign, of the signifier.
And here Kiefer seems to aim his work back at us, back at the world, like an emphatic mirror gun, a portal breaking down the notion that art is somehow one step removed from reality. And with each blast at the world an absence follows since, as Rosalind taught us long ago, “Absence is the condition of the representability of the sign”.
There is raw facility to paint. But also in terra cotta, in sheet metal, in the anonymous millions lost Tupperware lids, and those are hardly exalted though equally human with secrets, like Painting. The little plain words, a terrible beauty. Painting, as a locus or a tightened bow, is at the extraordinary mercy of everything around it, and paint, like everything else, is an instrument that processes others work into its own. Weʼve been following Painting around for centuries, and it keeps leading its way back to ourselves.

© FK & The Artists, 2020
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Get in touch

Diane is always available for side collaborations and talks worldwide. If you want to chat about design, books, wine, or anything else, don’t hesitate in reaching out.

Writing

Lessons from remote interviewing
April 2020

What design mentees need
December 2019

How to foster collaboration
November 2019