Art scene by Bill Van Siclen: Drawing on lines of many kinds for show at URI
There was a time, not that long ago, when everyone knew what a drawing was. It was, at its most basic level, a collection of handmade marks and patterns set down on a sheet of paper by someone using a relatively small number of tools and materials, among them chalk, charcoal, pencil, and pen and ink. Anything else was, well, something else.
How times have changed. Nowadays, as we learn in an exhibit at the University of Rhode Island, the word "drawing" encompasses everything from drawing-dependant disciplines such as lithography and engraving to more exotic art forms involving yarn, Mylar and even masking tape.
Unfortunately, "On the Mark: A Special Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing" also turns out to be something of a mixed bag.
On the one hand, there are relatively few drawings in the show, if by "drawing" you mean the old-fashioned kind with pen and pencil lines scrawled on sheets of paper. More importantly, many of the qualities associated with traditional draftsmanship -- notably the intimate connection between artistic inspiration and graphic skill embodied in the phrase "the hand of the artist" -- don't seem to hold much interest for the show's six contributors. Indeed, most of them gravitate toward conceptual and installation-based art forms.
On the other hand, Tolnick has picked a topic -- drawing -- that's all the rage in contemporary art circles right now. And she's assembled an interesting group of artists to illustrate the discipline's resurgence.
A GOOD EXAMPLE is Heeseop Yoon, a New York-based artist whose untitled tape-and-Mylar "drawing" is one of the first things you see as you enter URI's main Fine Arts Center gallery.
Installed in a corner of the gallery, Yoon's piece consists of hundreds of tiny strips of masking tape, carefully attached to the gallery wall. The results suggest a kind of giant doodle.
In fact, like most doodles, Yoon's work happily toggles between abstract and representational elements (including several passages that can be read as streets, buildings and other bits of urban scenery). At the same time, the painstaking process of tearing and sticking all those bits of tape is the antithesis of the breezy, spur-of-the-moment spirit of the average doodle.
Yoon's neighbor, Andrew Raftery, couldn't be more different.
Raftery, who heads the printmaking department at the Rhode Island School of Design, is known for his meticulously detailed prints and drawings, in which every gesture, pose and setting is rendered with gem-like clarity. He also has a gift for narrative (or at least cinematic) development -- a gift he shows off to fine effect in two multipart engravings, Open House and Suit Shopping.
In the first series, a group of intrepid house-hunters is seen trudging up and down stairs (Open House, Scene 4 [Upstairs Hallway]) and poking around a master bedroom (Open House Scene 5 [Bedroom]). In the second series, Raftery follows a group of shoppers at a fancy men's clothier.
In both cases, Raftery combines a wry sense of humor (check out the woman admiring herself in a mirror in the bedroom scene) with dazzling technical skill. Indeed, the closer you look at Raftery's work, the more it seems to hum with a kind of inner bounce and animation.
Despite their differences, Yoon and Raftery have at least a few things in common. One -- a prerequisite for any serious draftsman -- is fascination with mark-making in all its endless permutations. Another is a focus on hands-on processes, such as tearing and taping (Yoon) and the cutting and crosshatching associated with engraving (Raftery).
Similar concerns can be found in the work of Mariam Cabessa, another New York artist, whose paintings are produced by dragging rags, squeegees and other implements across puddles of wet paint. Like Yoon, Cabessa uses a labor-intensive technique that often restricts the kind of marks she can make. Yet like Raftery, her work packs a strong graphic punch.
PERHAPS THE SHOW'S most unusual entries belong to Miami artist Frances Trombly.
Connections, one of two Twombly works in "On the Mark," consists of several long wire-and-knitwear tubes that sprawl, kudzu-like, across the gallery floor. The result: a kind of 3-D drawing in which the tubes form the lines and the gallery itself provides the background.
Trombly's other work, Streaming (red, blue, yellow, green), is a variation on the same theme: It consists of four long cotton strips, each dyed a different color and hung, like holiday bunting, across the gallery wall.
While most of the artists in "On the Mark" are on the youngish side, San Francisco artist Tom Morioni is an elder statesman. Now in his mid-60s, Morioni is known for conceptual and performance-based pieces that question drawing's traditional status as the most intimate and personal of art forms.
His Process Prints, for example, were produced by feeding ink and paper into an offset lithograph machine, then letting the machine whirl away on its own. Contrary to what you might expect, the resulting prints show a surprising amount of variation, ranging from sheets that are nearly blank or lightly edged with ink to others filled with jittery marks and patterns.
Another interesting work is Drawing a Line as Far as I Can, in which Morioni traced a series of lines with a fully outstretched arm. While you might expect such an exercise to produce a single, repetitive line -- after all, your arm's only so long, right? -- the results are actually a lot more random.
The show's final contributor is Susan Knight, a New York artist whose cut-paper "drawings" illustrate marine scenes and animals.
"On the Mark: A Special Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing" runs through Dec. 11 at the URI Fine Arts Center in Kingston. Gallery hours: Tues.-Fri. noon-4 and Sat.-Sun. 1-4. Phone: (401) 847-2627.