Education Committee Visits the Studio of Biennial Artist Dawn Clements
Jun 4, 2010

On May 13, the Museum's Education Committee visited 2010 artist Dawn Clements's studio in Brooklyn.

Clements showed the group many of her ongoing drawings of interiors and domestic spaces, as well as the objects and films that inspire them.

The group was especially interested in an evolving drawing of the contents of the artists' desk, as well as a meticulous sumi ink drawing of a chandelier, which Clements found abandoned on the street. The artist explained that she always draws directly from the objects or images that inspire her work. Committee members were captivated by Clements's process and asked the artist many questions about the materials she uses. To give the group a better sense of her practice, Clements showed a clip of My Reputation, the 1940s melodrama which inspired her work in the Biennial. Mrs. Jessica Drummond's ('My Reputation,' 1946) is a drawing based on a composite of several shots from a scene of the character Mrs. Drummond's bedroom.

An unusual aspect of Clements's drawing practice is her working method—the artist regularly adds to and subtracts from her works while making them and often uses the discarded pieces from one drawing as the starting point for another. When she started drawing Mrs. Jessica Drummond's ('My Reputation,' 1946), Clements realized the drawing was going to be too long and decided to swap out a portion depicting the closet for a smaller version showing the closet from an oblique angle. The drawing of the original closet now serves as a starting point for an entirely different work. It was exciting to hear how Clements doesn't consider any of her drawings a mistake and always tries to find new and interesting ways to recycle them in other projects.

By Sarah Meller, Education Assistant