148 TEACHERs COLLEGE COLUmbIA UNIvERsITy
Drawing from Drawing
affects their size and shape. It is as if the room is a
piece of paper and the cardboard objects emerge
as a solid drawing you can walk around inside of.
I think you can draw with anything as long as it
serves to help draw out of you what you are trying
to see more clearly.
When I make something, I start out with a kind
of vague notion of something very specific—maybe
more of a feeling about something—and the act
of drawing focuses my attention on defining what
that feeling is and isn’t. I draw lines around it as if
they are boundaries. I draw lines within it to help
establish its particular it-ness—to delineate it from
the void of vagueness. Once I know what it is, I can
make a drawing of it and that is a different kind of
drawing. It becomes more like illustrating where
I focus on the craft of drawing more than actively
seeking the inner vision. I shift into a mode where
I start making the drawing into an object—making
it into a better bridge between what helped me see
what I knew it could be and what other people can
now look at understand.
I often try to preserve the sketch-like quality of
the act of seeking in my finished work whether it
is a costume design, a piece of theater or a drawing
or sculpture. I believe this quality keeps the object
feeling fresh—as if it has just been made—and in
this way, it invites its audience to seek something
in it too, as if they too have a hand in its creation.
Sometimes (but not always) when a work of art is
too “finished” there is no room for a viewer to enter
it and reinvent it for his or her own purpose. WhatThe SandmanWaiting Room
Drawing Forest