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Friday September 29th - Sunday October 1st 2023 Live, in-person, online and recorded workshops |
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£185 funded / £85 unfunded / DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE
NB: Draw Together - as always, we do not want money to be a barrier so please do contact us and let us know why you are keen to join us to draw together - we can be flexible with the price of your ticket. Email: drawingandcognition@gmail.com
Join us in New York City for LIVE IN-PERSON events, hosted at Living Room Gallery NYC and around NYC in museums and parks - email brewdrawing@gmail.com for details, and / or to express interest in booking shared accommodation for the event.
Join us in New York City for LIVE IN-PERSON events, hosted at Living Room Gallery NYC and around NYC in museums and parks - email brewdrawing@gmail.com for details, and / or to express interest in booking shared accommodation for the event.
The 2023 Thinking through Drawing symposium
hashtags: #ttd #drawcogs
In a spirit of hope, healing and imagination, we will explore the theme of Drawing Ground at our annual symposium.
We are collaborating with TtD members from around the world, in person and online, to explore:
What does GROUND mean to you? What is your relationship with earth? Where and how do you sit, where do you belong? How do you ground yourself in our ever-changing world? How do you build, nurture and protect a creative environment for yourself and others?
Our TtD 2023 hybrid symposium will provide space for us to connect and converse about drawing’s power to ground us, and as a tool to chronicle, confront, conceive and contribute to unique opportunities to create and recreate.
Our hybrid model combines local live workshops held around the world and global online get-togethers. As usual, the focus will be on sharing innovative and diverse drawing practices across fields, formats and platforms. We will continue our TtD exploration of sharing practices and problem solving with a wonderful selection of workshops and presentations selected from our open call, relating to Drawing Ground.
For 2023 Thinking Through Drawing are collaborating with Brew Draw, Indiana University Southeast US and SUNY New Paltz US.
We look forward to drawing together again
The TtD Board
WORKSHOPS, PRESENTATIONS & PERFORMANCES
Some workshops will be LIVE online during the symposium, some will be prerecorded, ALL will be available online for participants.
See below for bios of presenters
Some workshops will be LIVE online during the symposium, some will be prerecorded, ALL will be available online for participants.
See below for bios of presenters
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READING WATER
Ferwa Ibrahim, UAE 2 Online Live Workshops These workshop explore poetic and psychological dimension of water and its interaction with the human imagination through structured drawing meditations. Water plays a central role in various cultures' mythologies and symbolisms, often representing the primal aspects of existence. Its fluidity and ability to evoke emotions and human thought has always inspired artistic expression. In this workshop we will listen to the sound of water to read into our own body, thoughts and emotions. We hope to ride the waves of our emotions / thoughts and flow to meet the ground horizontally. Water has an amazing power to heal, wash wounds, and eventually fill the deepest crevasses of our mind and soul. Materials Required: Quiet space, wireless headphones, several sheets of paper, any drawing materials you like working with / holding / touching. For further details: ferwaibrahim@gmail.com |
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photograph by Elizabeth Felicella
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Fallen Trees, Hidden Spiral
Pamela Lawton, artist, and The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, NYC In-person LIVE Streamed Workshop FRIDAY 29th SEPTEMBER 3pm NYC / 8pm UK For those planning to attend the in-person OR the online part of this event, please email info@rcgrossfoundation.org or call +1 212-529-4906. Please include "TTD Gross" in your email's subject line. Slots are limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible. For online participants, please bring: 1) 2 kinds of paper, some smoother, some more rough, the larger, the better, hopefully around 12x18" or larger 2) a brown paper bag, opened up 3) at least 2 objects from home , either carved or found in nature, such as wood / metal/stone 4) two types of drawing tools, preferably one oily, such as an oil pastel or Cray-Pas, and something chalky such as any chalk pastel or charcoal. Alternatively, if these aren't available, any tool will do, such as pencil. 5) Masking tape |
Explore textures, marks, and forms within the historic light-filled gallery and studio of 20th-century artist Chaim Gross, where sculpture and drawings unspool through multilevel spaces.
Reinvigorate your tactile drawing acumen utilizing all the senses, inspired by an artist whose relationship to the earth was both grounded in his use of natural materials and anti-gravitational in design. His sculptures become both abstract and figural, and include acrobats and dancers, spiraling upward. Gross developed his compositions and forms through direct carving, which is a method that enhances the natural properties of the materials. He often worked with tropical hardwoods usually deemed too unwieldy by other artists.
We will take this to the realm of drawing, finding form and texture through mark making and movement using a variety of materials, echoing and extending the Access program “Tactile Transmissions” held at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation for people with low or no vision. “Fallen Trees, Hidden Spiral” is for people with any level of sight.
Participants will interact both in-person and through live streaming with the finished work, tools, and materials of Chaim Gross. The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit that preserves and interprets the historic home, studio, and art collections of renowned sculptor Chaim Gross (1902-91) and his wife Renee (1909-2005). More information can be found here.
The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation will come together in collaboration with artist Pamela Lawton.
We will take this to the realm of drawing, finding form and texture through mark making and movement using a variety of materials, echoing and extending the Access program “Tactile Transmissions” held at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation for people with low or no vision. “Fallen Trees, Hidden Spiral” is for people with any level of sight.
Participants will interact both in-person and through live streaming with the finished work, tools, and materials of Chaim Gross. The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit that preserves and interprets the historic home, studio, and art collections of renowned sculptor Chaim Gross (1902-91) and his wife Renee (1909-2005). More information can be found here.
The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation will come together in collaboration with artist Pamela Lawton.
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PAPERGROUND: on fragile soil Dr. Anthi Kosma, GREECE In-person LIVE Streamed Workshop The crumpled surface of the paper is our ground. Our earth in miniature. On its surfaces we “walk” by drawing lines, contours, paths, dots and furrows with “streams”. Our land is a/our corpus precious and fragile. It is watered, peeled, dried but also blooms. It is a process of design reflection and contemplation, a graphic "gardening". In the sentimental topographies of a paper, above the “ground” and below it, in between its folds and carvings we unfold our stories, concerns and suggestions for our "ground", to take good care of it, to worship it. Online workshop with local community (University of Thessaly). https://www.anthikosma.com/ |
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Dialogue through Movement
Patrick Shirvington, AUSTRALIA
Online Presentation
The practice of drawing has proven to be a way of knowing the world. We tend to look at the object, however, do we see the subject? The project works with drawing, but not in the usual way of developing precision and draftsman-ship, but rather as a tool for phenomenology. This paper presentation will look at the process of drawing as a practice that enhances cognition by observing the marks made by the movements.
http://www.patrickshirvington.com
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Hypothetical Flower: An Archive
Elizabeth Phelps, NEW YORK, US Online Workshop For years, I have drawn imaginary flowering plant forms. In this project, at this time of great socioecological destabilization and loss, I seek to mine this drawing habit for its meaning, and to expand my scope of imagination and understanding through collective involvement. The Archive of Hypothetical Flowers will hold a lexicon of imagined botanical forms existing in relation to an inventory of human hopes for various kinds of healing. I am performing "fieldwork" in the collective botanical imagination. I hope to have many participants who will submit their drawings to this Archive after going through a guided process of imagining and drawing a flowering/ fruiting plant with healing properties. HypotheticalFlower: An Archive www.elizabethwphelps.com |
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Responding through drawing: sensing our space of land and sky Sarah Goudie, UK Online Presentation Sarah will present a spoken word/film, on the experience of delivering a two-day workshop ‘Sensing land through drawing’. This will be held at the end of August at the Rural Art Hub, Ellesmere. The presentation will be a personal response to guiding a small group across two days using experimental, intuitive, and compassionate touch drawing methods. We will sense our way and find relation with the land; we will refer to poets, writers, artists who have paved our way. Sarah will in turn respond gathering sound, materials, and collaborative drawings to interpret and articulate the workshop through film and word. www.sarahgoudie.com |
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‘Bypass Wildlife’ & ‘Grave/Grebh/Graef’ Kathryn Poole, UK Online Presentation: Reflective Practice This artist presentation will discuss two of Poole’s recent projects: ‘Bypass Wildlife’ – a drawn archive of roadkill found on a bypass between towns, and ‘Grave/Grebh/Graef’ a study of graves and the unremarked life that can grow upon them. Both projects are rooted in active looking, repetition and remembrance. www.kathrynpoole.co.uk |
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Infinite Choke - Plastic, guilt, and ecotopian dreaming through the comic medium
APOLOGIES - THIS HAS BEEN CANCELLED Online Presentation Dr. Louis Netter, UK This illustrated talk with explore, through the comic, how university students perceive their own buying habits in relation to plastic and the difficult balance between convenience culture and a responsibility to the planet. The comic form enables the thoughts, ideas, and perceptions of students to take shape in drawn images which use the vernacular of symbols, visual metaphor, and abstract, visual conceptualising to evocatively connect the personal and emotional with wider issues of global concern. louis.netter@port.ac.uk |
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Light Shines Through Online Workshop Sarita Chouhan In darkness, in moments of suffering, we pray and we seek light to shine and remove all the shadows and heal. We walk and walk, feeling the earth beneath our feet, our connection with the earth, the light falling on the soil and the light entering our being. The earth is going through constant change, so are we. The fallen dry leaves were once green leaves on trees. The roads being built will have shiny surfaces, the layers beneath will have stories, and we will move on. |
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Ephemeral Modalities of Drawing Aurora De Armendi & Andrea Frank, USA (New Paltz) Workshop, Live, In-person / REFLECTIONS recording will be available fo online participants New Paltz NY Saturday Sept 23, 9am - 11:30am (in case of rain, Sept 24, same time) A live workshop, taking place outdoors before the symposium and recorded, with the recording of the workshop and reflections on it made available ahead of the symposium. During this workshop, De Armendi & Frank will formulate a collaborative drawing action, based on their research and explorations of ephemeral modalities of drawing in the environment. Drawing practices will involve water and rock as well as found tools and our bodies. |
Location: Peterskill Stream (Minnewaska Preserve, New Paltz, NY). We will closely observe and collaboratively interact with the flowing water and the rocks that shape and are shaped by it.
Meet at 9am at Peterskill Parking lot in New Paltz(5080 Rte 44-55, Gardiner, NY 12525)
It is part of Minnewaska State Park, enter with pass or pay $11 per car at entrance.
Contact us at franka@newpaltz.edu if you would like to meet at SUNY New Paltz and car pool.
Walking 12 minutes down to the stream requires solid shoes. Walking back up is moderately strenuous. Bring layers, water/food and sun/bug protection as needed. You may get wet. Bring comfortable clothes and walking shoes.
Meet at 9am at Peterskill Parking lot in New Paltz(5080 Rte 44-55, Gardiner, NY 12525)
It is part of Minnewaska State Park, enter with pass or pay $11 per car at entrance.
Contact us at franka@newpaltz.edu if you would like to meet at SUNY New Paltz and car pool.
Walking 12 minutes down to the stream requires solid shoes. Walking back up is moderately strenuous. Bring layers, water/food and sun/bug protection as needed. You may get wet. Bring comfortable clothes and walking shoes.
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Drawing & Dreaming
Beatriz Acevedo Online Workshops - Friday, Saturday & Sunday 9am UK When we spend almost half of our lives sleeping, dreams have a life on their own and they can be a potential source of wisdom. Alas, we rarely are able to unlock their power. This series of short workshops aims at connecting us with the power of dreams through drawings. Everyday from Monday to Thursday we will meet in the morning (switching between UK / NY morning time) to unlock our dreaming intelligence. Beatriz will guide us on how to make the best of dreams, with simple techniques for a better night sleeping and tips to remember those elusive streams of unconsciousness. Beatriz draws upon her own practice of dreaming, with some ideas from Jung’s approach to dreaming, and this is part of her ongoing purpose of encouraging people to live a beautiful life. Beatriz Acevedo Artist and Educator http://beatrizacevedoart.wordpress.com/ |
Instructions: Drawing+Dreaming
Beatriz will be guiding us in these three-day intensive dreaming and drawing workshops aiming at connecting with our dreams and exploring this oracle of the night. During these sessions, participants are invited to share their dreams and improve their sleeping practices. If you want to participate, these are the instructions: 1. Write down the intention you want to get in connection with your dreams. 2. Try to go to bed at a good time, do not bring your mobile to the room, and avoid caffeine three hours before your sleeping time. 3. In the morning. Free-flow writing of your dream. Do not worry about a narrative, whatever you can get from the dream is fine: an image, a feeling, a little scene. Then draw the dream. Again, there is no need to be precious about this, the rougher the drawing the better, pay attention to the visual clues and archetypes. If you want, think about the following elements. Settings: what is the atmosphere, morning, evening, geography, place? Feelings: What were your feelings in the dream (e.g. elation, frustration, fear, pride). Visual clues: What are the visuals, colors, animals, icons? Archetypes: What are the common themes of your dreams (e.g. a house, a car, movement, being prosecuted, horses, water). |
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The Joy of Autobiographical Comics
Michelle Darlington Online workshop In this workshop I will talk about my own comic 'Desmond', the process behind it, and how it helps me digest and make sense of the world and things that happen in it. I will also show examples of comics which have been made by workshop participants, for the purpose of exploring social problems and enabling multi-stakeholder groups to find common ground in order to tackle them collaboratively. I will then walk you through a simple and easy group process I have devised, which allows people of any ability level to create a simple comic that can spark human connections. This will be a process you can use with groups of adults or children. This workshop builds on and updates the online workshop I delivered at TTD 2021, in which we saw Desmond's adventures in the Kalahari. |
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Thought-Full Drawing
Dr Curie Scott Online Workshop Friday 29th September 3pm UK This drawing workshop introduces ‘simple’ diagrams drawings as powerful activation life tools. I use in them in coaching and learning for professional development. They can be applied widely such as developing resilience, how to set boundaries and improve confidence. This draw-and-tell workshop will help you gain clarity for your next steps, and you can share the insights you gain. I’d love to include some of your drawings within the ‘Graphic Facilitation’ book too! Some of the drawings will be accompanied by embodiment practices so come in comfortable clothes you can move in, be in a ‘zone’ that allows you to focus on some deep questions without interruption, and bring thick felt pens/ sharpies and paper. |
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Kinesthetic/Cartographic Memoirs a fertile performative ground reflecting on our dis/re locations and environments Katherine Ricketts Online LIVE Workshop This virtual workshop combines movement, story and drawing to create a kinesthetic/cartographic memoir in relation to place and space. The performative exploration starts with the prompt I remember when I first arrived/departed. This will call upon participants to think of place and space geographically/emotionally in relation to dis or re location. In partners (breakout rooms), the story is told; one person speaking and the other drawing the salient points resembling a cartographic or topographical record. This is transferred to movement with chosen words, poeticized and spoken simultaneously. The partners reverse the roles and they end combining their two vocal, kinesthetic and visual stories, exemplifying this modality as a fertile ground to reflect upon our chosen and unchosen environments both transitory and fixed. |
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Drawing Practice
Natasha Mayo Online Presentation Drawing has long been established as a conversational tool, as notation passed between individuals or with larger groups to create an evidence trail of ideas. There is a fascinating sociality to the activity, finding parallels with the dynamics of a conversation, as artists enter similar cycles of inspection, re-conception and re-examination, pushing ideas forward, asserting focus, and altering original intentions. The MAA/Ground residency In Finland, hosted by Brew & Fält, offered the opportunity for me to examine this sociality on a more nuanced level, by applying approaches commonly used in Oral History practice to devise a model of drawing that can sensitise those involved to the nature of human interaction, and explore the ‘smaller stories’, hidden within the hesitancies and utterances of emergent and growing ideas. Dr Natasha Mayo FHEA FRSA Senior Lecturer Ceramics Pathway Leader MA Ceramics and Maker |
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Drawing Energy In / Resilience as a Creative Act
Dr. Merrie Koester
Online LIVE Workshop
For our TtD experience, Merrie will share how we can literally Draw Energy In to a learning system that empowers our youth to “Step UP, Get READY, and RESPOND” to environmental hazards as resilient citizen scientists and artists.
Dr. Merrie Koester
Online LIVE Workshop
For our TtD experience, Merrie will share how we can literally Draw Energy In to a learning system that empowers our youth to “Step UP, Get READY, and RESPOND” to environmental hazards as resilient citizen scientists and artists.
Shared Futures: Imagining futures by drawing and listening
ARTIST'S TALK
Emma Fält (She/They) will share her Listening through Drawing practices, and discuss her community work. She will talk about a participatory art project started in 2020. Shared Futures is a long-term, multiform collaboration that invites people to imagine futures. Fält and dancer-choreographer Anna Maria Väisänen have held weekly workshops in Kuopio, Finland for 60+ people. The group explores the urban space and the living environments of the participants, as well as the related needs and dreams for the future. Deep and radical listening, wild co-imagination, and a multisensory approach have been central to the work. In the presentation, Emma will be talking about the project in general and the different ways drawing has played an important role in their approach to political imagination.
WORKSHOP
Shared Futures: Imagining futures by drawing and listening
Following from the artist's talk, Emma will lead an online workshop, inviting us to connect with our living environment and to listen to it carefully.
ARTIST'S TALK
Emma Fält (She/They) will share her Listening through Drawing practices, and discuss her community work. She will talk about a participatory art project started in 2020. Shared Futures is a long-term, multiform collaboration that invites people to imagine futures. Fält and dancer-choreographer Anna Maria Väisänen have held weekly workshops in Kuopio, Finland for 60+ people. The group explores the urban space and the living environments of the participants, as well as the related needs and dreams for the future. Deep and radical listening, wild co-imagination, and a multisensory approach have been central to the work. In the presentation, Emma will be talking about the project in general and the different ways drawing has played an important role in their approach to political imagination.
WORKSHOP
Shared Futures: Imagining futures by drawing and listening
Following from the artist's talk, Emma will lead an online workshop, inviting us to connect with our living environment and to listen to it carefully.
Angie Brew will introduce her project ALL THE BIRDS and share images from her show at The Living Room Gallery, NYC. She is in the process of drawing all the bird species in the world, as part of an environmental campaign to fight air pollution and climate change.
DRAWING TOGETHER
Collaborative drawing during the symposium
The Amber Tree
LIVE in-person workshop, Manhattan NYC
We will continue to 'grow' the never-ending drawing of a mother tree and her surrounding forest of tree drawings, with drawing spirits and birds in the branches and root systems.
MinDraw
Online collaboration
One minute drawings project, by Wanda Klenz Productions. During lockdown in UK Wanda Klenz and colleagues launched a one minute a day drawings project, with the goal of helping health workers and people with Covid to reflect on daily events in health care settings, in isolation, in lockdown etc. It then expanded, and now is a One Minute Drawing project for everyone - given that we are ALL affected by Covid. Please join the Facebook group to share your one minute drawings.
Facebook page
Facebook group
blog
LIVE in-person workshop, Manhattan NYC
We will continue to 'grow' the never-ending drawing of a mother tree and her surrounding forest of tree drawings, with drawing spirits and birds in the branches and root systems.
MinDraw
Online collaboration
One minute drawings project, by Wanda Klenz Productions. During lockdown in UK Wanda Klenz and colleagues launched a one minute a day drawings project, with the goal of helping health workers and people with Covid to reflect on daily events in health care settings, in isolation, in lockdown etc. It then expanded, and now is a One Minute Drawing project for everyone - given that we are ALL affected by Covid. Please join the Facebook group to share your one minute drawings.
Facebook page
Facebook group
blog
THE PROGRAMME
TIMES OF SESSIONS
TIMES OF SESSIONS
BIOGRAPHIES
BIOGRAPHIES
The TtD Drawing Board Directors:
Drs Brew, Fava & Kantrowitz, collectively known as 123 Draw, are the founders of Thinking through Drawing. In 2018 123 Draw became 123456 Draw when artist educators Emily Sheehan, Emma Fält and Beatriz Acevedo joined the board.
Together they run the TtD Symposium series, professional development courses, workshops, gallery shows and drawing residencies around the world.
Beatriz Acevedo (Colombia/United Kingdom) also known as CreatiBe Oracle is an artist and educator passionate about re-sparking the creative super-powers of individuals, communities and organisations. She has extensive experience in higher education, recognised by her National Teaching Fellowship (2020), and is writing about Beautiful Living.
Angie Brew is an artist, researcher and drawing teacher. She holds a Drawing MA with distinction from Camberwell College of Art, UAL, London. For her doctorate she worked in the Drawing & Cognition Project, Camberwell, researching enactive observational drawing methods and pedagogy. This resulted in a new cognitively-informed approach called 'Drawing Growth', synchronising eye and hand. Her art practice explores drawing for well-being and healing, and close observational drawing of growth processes. She is artist in residence in a community greenhouse in Brixton, London, where she leads a collaborative Drawing Growth project and a weekly drawing club. She runs an interdisciplinary research project called Drawlearn, exploring how drawing enables and enhances learning 'across the board'. During Covid lockdown she ran online sessions called Tree Meds - calming drawing meditations, and, with artists Angela Hodgson-Teall and Jen Wright, launched MinDraw, a one minute a day drawing project.
Angie at
brewdraw.com
drawlearn.com
Academia.edu
Michelle Fava is Head of Knowledge Transfer and Digital Learning Programme Manager at the Centre for Social Innovation, Cambridge University. She is co-founder of the Thinking Through Drawing project. She holds a PhD in drawing from Loughborough University and completed her post-doctoral research at Cambridge School of Art (in the UK), looking into the way in which drawing education practices are changing in art schools. Her work brings together cognitive principles and design thinking approaches to education and facilitation. She has written and edited academic publications on drawing, visual literacy and arts integration. Michelle has worked with UK schools and colleges to innovate curricula and teaching methods, and foster communities for pedagogic research and innovation.Michelle’s present research is looking into the factors influencing the longevity of Community Economic Development Organisations in the UK.
Michelle likes to draw seeds. She is looking forward to receiving her French passport next week so that she can remain European. She has a geriatric spaniel.
Michelle at Academia.edu
Andrea Kantrowitz EdD. is an artist and educator, is the Director of the Art Education Program at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She has lectured and led workshops on art and cognition internationally, and has twice served as a Singapore Ministry of Education Outstanding Educator in Residence. As a director of the Thinking through Drawing Project, founded during her doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, she co-organized 10 years of international drawing and cognition research symposia and workshops, in collaboration with colleagues from around the world. Before coming to Columbia University Teachers College as a doctoral student, she was a teaching artist in the New York City public schools for many years, involved in multiple local and national research projects. As a teaching artist with the Studio in a School organization, she co-developed and implemented an integrated art, math, and literacy curriculum for a federally funded Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) project. This project included a randomized control trial that demonstrated the impact of an integrated art curriculum for students growing up in poverty. She holds a BA in Art and Cognition from Harvard University and an MFA in Painting from Yale. She has taught foundation drawing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and graduate courses in contemporary art at the College of New Rochelle. Prior to her work in K-12 education, she was the visual art foundation coordinator at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. Her paintings have been exhibited nationally and are in many private collections. She has curated multiple exhibitions on themes of drawing, cognition, and the creative work of artist/educators. She is an artist member of The Painting Center in New York City, and her artwork is also represented by Kenise Barnes Fine Art. She lives, hikes, draws, and paints in the Hudson Valley, NY.
Andrea at Academia.edu
Emily Sheehan is a visual artist and drawing teacher. She received her MFA in Visual Studies, with a specialization in Drawing and Sculpture, from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in 2008. Since 2014, Emily has held the position of Assistant Professor of Fine Art and Drawing Area Head at Indiana University Southeast. As an educator, Emily is interested in creating creative curriculum that combines traditional academic drawing techniques with immediate, experimental, and unexpected drawing materials and methods. She develops and teaches curriculum to help fine arts students explore drawing as a tool for invention, conceptualization, and self-directed ideation, description, discussion, and problem solving. Emily’s artistic practice/research utilizes perceptual drawing (drawing from observation in a multi-sensory way) to explore the way that marks left on a page become evidence of lived experience.
Website: www.emilysheehanstudiosite.com
Emma Vilina Fält (BA(Design),MA (Fine Art), FIN, s.1983) is a multidisciplinary artist working in the field of drawing and performing arts. Her work takes a comprehensive look at drawing as a means to make contact, open dialogues and collaboratively explore our experience of the world. Her participatory pieces combine live drawing, sounds, multimedia and written scores to create live acts with groups. Fälts current work and ongoing artistic research explores drawing as listening. Fält has shown her work in Finland and abroad in galleries, festivals, symposiums, museums and worked in community projects with youth in Finland. Emma Teaches drawing in Art School Maa, at the Hospital school in Kuopio, Finland and works as a visiting teacher around the world.
http://emmafalt.net
https://vimeo.com/vilina
Creating space for listening
The TtD Drawing Board Directors:
Drs Brew, Fava & Kantrowitz, collectively known as 123 Draw, are the founders of Thinking through Drawing. In 2018 123 Draw became 123456 Draw when artist educators Emily Sheehan, Emma Fält and Beatriz Acevedo joined the board.
Together they run the TtD Symposium series, professional development courses, workshops, gallery shows and drawing residencies around the world.
Beatriz Acevedo (Colombia/United Kingdom) also known as CreatiBe Oracle is an artist and educator passionate about re-sparking the creative super-powers of individuals, communities and organisations. She has extensive experience in higher education, recognised by her National Teaching Fellowship (2020), and is writing about Beautiful Living.
Angie Brew is an artist, researcher and drawing teacher. She holds a Drawing MA with distinction from Camberwell College of Art, UAL, London. For her doctorate she worked in the Drawing & Cognition Project, Camberwell, researching enactive observational drawing methods and pedagogy. This resulted in a new cognitively-informed approach called 'Drawing Growth', synchronising eye and hand. Her art practice explores drawing for well-being and healing, and close observational drawing of growth processes. She is artist in residence in a community greenhouse in Brixton, London, where she leads a collaborative Drawing Growth project and a weekly drawing club. She runs an interdisciplinary research project called Drawlearn, exploring how drawing enables and enhances learning 'across the board'. During Covid lockdown she ran online sessions called Tree Meds - calming drawing meditations, and, with artists Angela Hodgson-Teall and Jen Wright, launched MinDraw, a one minute a day drawing project.
Angie at
brewdraw.com
drawlearn.com
Academia.edu
Michelle Fava is Head of Knowledge Transfer and Digital Learning Programme Manager at the Centre for Social Innovation, Cambridge University. She is co-founder of the Thinking Through Drawing project. She holds a PhD in drawing from Loughborough University and completed her post-doctoral research at Cambridge School of Art (in the UK), looking into the way in which drawing education practices are changing in art schools. Her work brings together cognitive principles and design thinking approaches to education and facilitation. She has written and edited academic publications on drawing, visual literacy and arts integration. Michelle has worked with UK schools and colleges to innovate curricula and teaching methods, and foster communities for pedagogic research and innovation.Michelle’s present research is looking into the factors influencing the longevity of Community Economic Development Organisations in the UK.
Michelle likes to draw seeds. She is looking forward to receiving her French passport next week so that she can remain European. She has a geriatric spaniel.
Michelle at Academia.edu
Andrea Kantrowitz EdD. is an artist and educator, is the Director of the Art Education Program at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She has lectured and led workshops on art and cognition internationally, and has twice served as a Singapore Ministry of Education Outstanding Educator in Residence. As a director of the Thinking through Drawing Project, founded during her doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, she co-organized 10 years of international drawing and cognition research symposia and workshops, in collaboration with colleagues from around the world. Before coming to Columbia University Teachers College as a doctoral student, she was a teaching artist in the New York City public schools for many years, involved in multiple local and national research projects. As a teaching artist with the Studio in a School organization, she co-developed and implemented an integrated art, math, and literacy curriculum for a federally funded Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) project. This project included a randomized control trial that demonstrated the impact of an integrated art curriculum for students growing up in poverty. She holds a BA in Art and Cognition from Harvard University and an MFA in Painting from Yale. She has taught foundation drawing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and graduate courses in contemporary art at the College of New Rochelle. Prior to her work in K-12 education, she was the visual art foundation coordinator at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. Her paintings have been exhibited nationally and are in many private collections. She has curated multiple exhibitions on themes of drawing, cognition, and the creative work of artist/educators. She is an artist member of The Painting Center in New York City, and her artwork is also represented by Kenise Barnes Fine Art. She lives, hikes, draws, and paints in the Hudson Valley, NY.
Andrea at Academia.edu
Emily Sheehan is a visual artist and drawing teacher. She received her MFA in Visual Studies, with a specialization in Drawing and Sculpture, from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in 2008. Since 2014, Emily has held the position of Assistant Professor of Fine Art and Drawing Area Head at Indiana University Southeast. As an educator, Emily is interested in creating creative curriculum that combines traditional academic drawing techniques with immediate, experimental, and unexpected drawing materials and methods. She develops and teaches curriculum to help fine arts students explore drawing as a tool for invention, conceptualization, and self-directed ideation, description, discussion, and problem solving. Emily’s artistic practice/research utilizes perceptual drawing (drawing from observation in a multi-sensory way) to explore the way that marks left on a page become evidence of lived experience.
Website: www.emilysheehanstudiosite.com
Emma Vilina Fält (BA(Design),MA (Fine Art), FIN, s.1983) is a multidisciplinary artist working in the field of drawing and performing arts. Her work takes a comprehensive look at drawing as a means to make contact, open dialogues and collaboratively explore our experience of the world. Her participatory pieces combine live drawing, sounds, multimedia and written scores to create live acts with groups. Fälts current work and ongoing artistic research explores drawing as listening. Fält has shown her work in Finland and abroad in galleries, festivals, symposiums, museums and worked in community projects with youth in Finland. Emma Teaches drawing in Art School Maa, at the Hospital school in Kuopio, Finland and works as a visiting teacher around the world.
http://emmafalt.net
https://vimeo.com/vilina
Creating space for listening
2023 contributors
Sarita Chouhan is a visual artist and her multi-disciplinary practice is primarily drawing based using thread work, drawing, painting, photography, videos, installations and collaborations. Her meticulously drawn abstractions reflect the inner fabric of resilience, pain, suffering, of hope and faith. With shadows inside that we need to constantly work with, making vulnerability not our weakness but our strength, these landscapes of lines, dots and dashes, like a weaving of a fabric symbolize continuity and infiniteness, the perseverance and beauty pulsating with energy. Her abstract aesthetic contemplates on connection between mind, body and spirit, looking at various emotions and patterns inside and simultaneously in nature.
Sarita has exhibited her works in solos and group shows and participated in artist residencies.
Sarita Chouhan lives and works in Mumbai.
https://www.Instagram.com/saritarchouhan
http://sarichouhan.blogspot.com/
Sarita has exhibited her works in solos and group shows and participated in artist residencies.
Sarita Chouhan lives and works in Mumbai.
https://www.Instagram.com/saritarchouhan
http://sarichouhan.blogspot.com/
Aurora De Armendi / she, her, hers / LGBTQIA + ally
Aurora De Armendi Sobrino is an Assistant Professor in the Printmaking Area at SUNY New Paltz. She is currently making drawings and thinking of drawing as a practice for conversations and interactions with others. In her current artist book collaboration with Chilean artist Maria Luisa Portuondo titled Verde y Carmelita, she is exploring our interconnection and interdependence with forests.
If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees - Rainer Maria Rilke
In process:
SURE Mentorship, SUNY NP BFA Printmaking Students Ezra Heller and Matthew Benson.
NYSCA Grant Recipient (Collaborators Maria Luisa Portuondo and the Hispanic Society of America) 2023 - 2024.
NYSCA Exhibition, Hispanic Society of America, September, 2023 (Upcoming)
Aurora De Armendi Sobrino is an Assistant Professor in the Printmaking Area at SUNY New Paltz. She is currently making drawings and thinking of drawing as a practice for conversations and interactions with others. In her current artist book collaboration with Chilean artist Maria Luisa Portuondo titled Verde y Carmelita, she is exploring our interconnection and interdependence with forests.
If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees - Rainer Maria Rilke
In process:
SURE Mentorship, SUNY NP BFA Printmaking Students Ezra Heller and Matthew Benson.
NYSCA Grant Recipient (Collaborators Maria Luisa Portuondo and the Hispanic Society of America) 2023 - 2024.
NYSCA Exhibition, Hispanic Society of America, September, 2023 (Upcoming)
Andrea Frank’s artistic research focuses on emergent collaborative processes in the context of remembering our humble place in the larger web of life and continues to develop the ever evolving System Drawing format. She is an Associate Professor of art/photography at SUNY New Paltz and a founding member of Eddy, a collaborative teaching and learning lab that explores pathways toward a regenerative culture.
Sarah Goudie is an artist /creative practitioner based in Stourbridge, UK. She studied sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art and Fine Art MA at Birmingham City University. Her practice uses writing, photography, film and large scale, sculptural drawing. Themes of repair, beauty and aliveness are considered through the poetic intimacies of drawing and timed observations of once loved objects placed in her garden. She delivers large scale drawing opportunities for all ages and creative abilities and has a special interest in guided drawing, bilateral and ‘compassionate touch’ approaches to making.
www.sarahgoudie.com
www.sarahgoudie.com
Ferwa Ibrahim is a Pakistani drawing and new media artist, currently working as an Assistant Professor at American University of Emirates, Dubai, UAE. She has been reading into the language of her own body, that she developed as a south Asian Muslim woman. Her work explores how cultural and religious ritualistic practices affect one’s body language, mark making and drawing.She has an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, USA and has been teaching Art in UAE, Pakistan and the USA since the past 10 years.
ferwaibrahim@gmail.com
ferwaibrahim@gmail.com
Dr. Merrie Koester is a native of Charleston, SC, USA, a city emerging from pluff mud and saltmarsh, a deeply sacred space with the sky as the ceiling and where the shrimp play sonatas. When she’s not out in the marsh, Merrie’s a science teacher educator, researcher, and artist, working primarily in schools serving historic African American neighborhoods, who lost their community saltmarshes to commercial development. Now, these families endure some of the worst flooding Charleston experiences. Merrie is the founder and director of an “educative resilience generating” outreach called Kids Teaching Flood Resilience, which centers the disproportionate flooding and hurricane risk being borne by BIPOC communities. In her forthcoming field guide, Merrie writes, “For many, the idea of vulnerability implies both voicelessness and powerlessness. The “v” word can signify weakness, dependency, and victimhood, and is a term often applied to children and youth. But this is not that kind of story at all.” For our TtD experience, Merrie will share how we can literally Draw Energy In to a learning system that empowers our youth to “Step UP, Get READY, and RESPOND” to environmental hazards as resilient citizen scientists and artists.
Anthi Kosma
Dept. of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Greece, PhD, DEA ETSA de Madrid
Anthi Kosma studied architecture (DUTH, 2005) with a DEA-PhD and research related with drawing as exploratory action (School of Architecture of Madrid - UPM, 2014). She is currently giving classes as an external professor at the school of architecture in NTUA and UTH.
https://imprografika.wordpress.com
https://instagram.com/anthoskosmos
Dept. of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Greece, PhD, DEA ETSA de Madrid
Anthi Kosma studied architecture (DUTH, 2005) with a DEA-PhD and research related with drawing as exploratory action (School of Architecture of Madrid - UPM, 2014). She is currently giving classes as an external professor at the school of architecture in NTUA and UTH.
https://imprografika.wordpress.com
https://instagram.com/anthoskosmos
Pamela Lawton
Pamela Lawton’s 2019-20 “Multisensory Drawing In Siena” project awarded her a U.S. Fulbright Scholar grant at the Siena Art Institute in Italy. Propelling her into tactile realms, she merged her own artwork approach with what she had developed with her low and no-vision students at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi Galleries, the Benaki Museum (Athens) and the Palazzo Strozzi. Solo shows include the Galeria Nacional, Costa Rica, the Galeria Isabel Ignacio, Spain, and The Conde Nast Building, and 180 Maiden Lane. Group exhibits include the Metropolitan Museum Mezzanine print shop, Pierogi, Sideshow, and Tibor De Nagy galleries. Lawton was an artist-in-residence at the World Trade Center through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Poetry collaborations include Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh. While teaching at New School University, she created a study-abroad class in Sri Lanka. She teaches at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattanville College, and the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation. www.pamelalawton.com
Pamela Lawton’s 2019-20 “Multisensory Drawing In Siena” project awarded her a U.S. Fulbright Scholar grant at the Siena Art Institute in Italy. Propelling her into tactile realms, she merged her own artwork approach with what she had developed with her low and no-vision students at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi Galleries, the Benaki Museum (Athens) and the Palazzo Strozzi. Solo shows include the Galeria Nacional, Costa Rica, the Galeria Isabel Ignacio, Spain, and The Conde Nast Building, and 180 Maiden Lane. Group exhibits include the Metropolitan Museum Mezzanine print shop, Pierogi, Sideshow, and Tibor De Nagy galleries. Lawton was an artist-in-residence at the World Trade Center through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Poetry collaborations include Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh. While teaching at New School University, she created a study-abroad class in Sri Lanka. She teaches at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattanville College, and the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation. www.pamelalawton.com
Natasha Mayo is a practitioner, researcher and since 2004 senior lecturer in the discipline of ceramics at the National Centre of ceramics Studies in Wales UK. Her practice is fuelled by interest in a materials sociability, in practices that move between social, technical as well as creative ways of working. Her teaching weaves ceramics, drawing, poetry, oral histories, sensory anthropology, and archaeology alongside figurative practice, to test the boundaries and preconceptions of a discipline and identify more holistic and generative approaches to creativity.
Louis Netter is a practising illustrator with over 15 years of experience. His satirical illustration has been published in magazines and books and his artwork is collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Library of Congress amongst other collections in the US. Recently, a comic collaboration with Olly Gruner was published in the Corbyn Comic (Self Made Hero). He completed a PhD at the Royal College of Art in Reportage Drawing and is exploring further practice based research in ‘comic as research’ projects following the publication of Steal This History in the journal Re Thinking History, published by Taylor and Francis. Other practice based research is exploring community outreach and lived experience through art making in Nairobi slums, arts and resilience in South Sudan and the factors that impact violence against women in southeast Asia.
www.louisnetter.com
www.lifestooshortfornuance.com
https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/louis-netter
www.louisnetter.com
www.lifestooshortfornuance.com
https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/louis-netter
Dr. Kathryn Ricketts
Kathryn, Full Professor in the Faculty of Education in the University of Regina, Canada, has worked for 45 years in dance, theatre and visual arts, performing and teaching throughout Europe, South America, Africa, Australia and Canada. Her work in studios, galleries, theatres and environmental sites focuses on social/political issues through the languages of dance, theatre, text, technology and visual art. Her research furthers this into areas of literacy, embodiment and cultural studies with a method she has coined Embodied Poetic Narrative. Ricketts performs characters through improvisational structures always in collaborative with other artists and directly responsive to dynamic sites of meaning.
Kathryn, Full Professor in the Faculty of Education in the University of Regina, Canada, has worked for 45 years in dance, theatre and visual arts, performing and teaching throughout Europe, South America, Africa, Australia and Canada. Her work in studios, galleries, theatres and environmental sites focuses on social/political issues through the languages of dance, theatre, text, technology and visual art. Her research furthers this into areas of literacy, embodiment and cultural studies with a method she has coined Embodied Poetic Narrative. Ricketts performs characters through improvisational structures always in collaborative with other artists and directly responsive to dynamic sites of meaning.
Curie Scott drew as a child and then got lured away. She has now returned with drawing threading through her freelance consultancy work as an embodiment coach, artist, researcher, writer, and facilitator.
A medical doctor turned lecturer; Curie found drawings helped health professional students learn. Her PhD led to a model on how thought is shaped by generative drawing. Her first book, ‘Drawing for Health and Wellbeing’ pitched for an wide audience, is a research informed publication with practical drawing strategies. She is currently working on two further books on drawing, one for drawing researchers and practitioners, and ‘Graphic Facilitation’ for coaches and facilitators.
Patrick Shirvington is an artist focusing on drawing and also an award winning children’s book
illustrator. He has a Master of Cross Disciplinary Art and Design UNSWMCDArtDes
My work investigates the relationship to the natural world through drawing, believing the practice of drawing is fundamental to the cognitive process and to opening doors to the unseen.
I tell my story with mythical symbols, whether from the brush on a large canvas to the more intimate illustrations in children’s books, I feel the unknown is more important than the known, as it awakens our dreams
and intuition.
illustrator. He has a Master of Cross Disciplinary Art and Design UNSWMCDArtDes
My work investigates the relationship to the natural world through drawing, believing the practice of drawing is fundamental to the cognitive process and to opening doors to the unseen.
I tell my story with mythical symbols, whether from the brush on a large canvas to the more intimate illustrations in children’s books, I feel the unknown is more important than the known, as it awakens our dreams
and intuition.
Elizabeth Winslow Phelps was born in Mount Kisco, New York. She is an interdisciplinary artist who integrates a variety of approaches from the fine arts as well as from performance, poetry, and craft traditions to create installations as well as experimental animation. Phelps’ work is fueled by ideas of spiritual practice and transformation and how these might overlap with imaginative, creative actions that are personally and socially restorative. Her current projects address spiritual and social dimensions of our current ecological crises. Phelps currently lives with her daughter and black lab in Poughkeepsie, NY, where she teaches Visual Art.
www.elizabethwphelps.com
- more bios to follow
MEDIA - TtD events and publications 2011-present
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