Second Saturdays: The Drawing Center
Dec 13, 2014
Teens participate in an icebreaker activity at The Drawing Center, December 2014. Photograph by Jamie Rosenfeld
On December 13, YI Leaders and New York City teens visited The Drawing Center in SoHo. We began the day by learning about the history of The Drawing Center and participating in an icebreaker activity that brought the group together. The activity involved each of us stating our names and the last thing we drew, while passing a ball of yarn to the next person and not letting go of our piece, essentially interconnecting all of us by the end. By doing this activity we saw that drawing is not bound by a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper. It is much more than what we traditionally think of, which is a message that The Drawing Center strives to communicate to visitors.
Teens discuss the exhibition Thread Lines with the Drawing Center’s educator, December 2014. Photograph by Jamie Rosenfeld
The Thread Lines exhibition at the Drawing Center is a collection of works by sixteen artists who explore the idea of thread and of drawing. The first work we looked at was by Sheila Hicks, an artist who participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial exhibition. She used weaving as a way of keeping a journal, making one piece a day based on what she had seen or experienced that day. Interpreting these small woven pieces as sketches furthered our notion of what drawing can be.
The group explores Anne Wilson’s site specific installation, December 2014. Photograph by Jamie Rosenfeld
From these small notebook sized works we moved onto Anne Wilson’s large-scale site-specific piece where she did a performance over time and turned part of the building’s architecture into a loom. Throughout the exhibition, we noticed the amount of work that the artists put into each piece. The idea of “labor” connected well to the history of The Drawing Center, which was originally used as a textile factory.
Teens weave different materials together inspired by Sheila Hicks’s work, December 2014. Photograph by Jamie Rosenfeld
Inspired by Sheila Hicks’s process, we concluded our visit to The Drawing Center by weaving our own pieces on small looms with a wide array of different materials. I enjoyed seeing works by artists who challenge the traditional boundaries of drawing.
Sheila Hicks inspired weavings, December 2014. Photograph by Filip Wolak
The Drawing Center is looking forward to collaborating more with Museum Teen Summit members to create an online project called Street Art Saturdays. On their website, any teen can submit pictures of street art they find with their name and school, a location of where they found the piece, and a sentence or two describing what they thought about it. Youth Insights Leaders look forward to future Second Saturdays when we explore interesting art spaces downtown each month before the Whitney opens on May 1, 2015!
By Anna, YI Leader