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Drawing showcased in exhibition

David Dupuis, “If You Go Away,” 2012, color pencil and collage on paper, 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery.

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  • “George Boorujy, “Bellow Black Diamond,” 2012, ink on paper, 72 x 120 inches. Courtesy of the artist and P.P.O.W Gallery, New York, N.Y. Click on the image to see a larger version.

    “Charmaine Wheatley, “Hides Heads Horns” poster, 2012, watercolor, ink, gouache on 100lb. Strathmore Bristol paper, 10 1⁄2 x 7 7⁄8 inches. Courtesy of the artist. Click on the image to see a larger version.

By SUE WUETCHER
Published: September 13, 2012

The “subservient” medium of drawing will be showcased in “Falling through Space Drawn by the Line,” an exhibition on view in the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts, North Campus, Sept. 20 through Dec. 8.

The exhibit will open with a free public reception from 5-7 p.m. Sept. 20.

The UB Art Gallery also will hold a number of public programs in conjunction with the exhibition.

“Falling through Space Drawn by the Line” lures viewers into imagined landscapes—through fields of abstraction and into recollections and observations of lived experiences, according exhibition co-curator Sandra Q. Firmin, curator of the UB Art Gallery.

The artists work on paper and employ drawing as their primary mode of expression “to pictorialize internal visions and grapple with the external world around them,” Firmin says, adding that up until the 20th century, drawing was generally considered “subservient” to painting, sculpture and architecture because it was employed in the preparatory sketches used to communicate and fine-tune ideas and forms.

“While drawing’s status has been elevated in recent years,” notes Firmin and exhibition co-curator Joan Linder, UB professor of visual studies, “it is still regarded for the ease and immediacy in which thoughts, perceptions and emotions can be visualized using widely available materials such as ink and graphite.”

As an embodied practice, drawing, the curators say, provides “an antidote to the preponderance of digital gadgetry and media images that have infiltrated all aspects of society”—much like the increasingly popular “do-it-yourself” culture and urban farming movements “celebrate the handmade and physically connect us to the modes of production that sustain us.”

Artists featured in the exhibition are Reed Anderson, George Boorujy, Saul Chernick, Marsha Cottrell, David Dupuis, Lori Ellison, Edie Fake, Rosemarie Fiore, Ellen Lesperance, Schuyler Maehl, Anne Muntges, Toyin Odutola, Michelle Oosterbaan, Tony Orrico, Charles Ritchie, Stan Shellabarger, Molly Springfield, Allyson Strafella, Charmaine Wheatley, Ripley Whiteside and Deborah Zlotsky.

Several public programs with artists featured in the exhibition have been scheduled in the gallery. They are:

  • “Tony Orrico performs the Penwald Drawing, 8 Circles”: 4-7 p.m., Oct. 3, Lightwell Gallery. Penwald drawings are a series of bilateral drawings in which Orrico explores the use of his body as a tool of measurement to inscribe geometries through movement.
  • “Big Draw,” part of Center for the Arts’ Open Studios: 4-8 p.m., Oct. 26. Students in the departments of Media Study, Music, Theater and Dance, and Visual Studies will showcase their work throughout the CFA in an extravaganza of drawing activities.
  • “Print, Stamp and Draw” workshop and exhibition tours: Anne Muntges will lead a workshop and tour for adults and educators from 4-7 p.m., Nov. 7; a session for families will be held from 1-3 p.m. Nov. 10. In both sessions, participants will print with unconventional materials to create holiday cards. The fee is $20 per person for adults/educators; $10 per person for families; Art materials are included in both workshops. To register, contact Ginny O’Brien at 839-3754.
  • Curators’ tour of the exhibition: noon to 1 p.m. Nov. 13.
  • “Michelle Oosterbaan: Both—and Once Again”: 6:30-8 p.m., Nov. 26, CFA Screening Room. Oosterbaan will lecture about her work as part of the Department of Visual Studies’ Speaker Series. A painter whose artistic output investigates the psychology of space and color, Oosterbaan intrigued with how events in our lives transform us, whether they are personally visceral and/or vicarious. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues that include The Drawing Center, The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.