Sunday 11 November 2012

The Video of the Big Draw!

I write this as the video is uploading to youtube. It is 20 minutes long and features 15 different drawing activities, thumbnails to follow but the text explaining it is below & the link is HERE:


Some beautiful drawings, some strange ideas, & lots of people having a go at the Star & Shadow. www.starandshadow.org.uk

October is Big Draw month, when the Campaign for Drawing & enthusiasts like me try to get everyone drawing - even those who think art's something they were no good at at school.

The Star & Shadow Cinema in Newcastle-upon-Tyne is an entirely volunteer-run venue full of the kind of people who are up for that kind of thing. Here, in 15 sections, are documented some of the 'drawing' activities that we got up to this October.

Music by Richard Dawson, Goat, and Hannabiell & Midnight Blue (all of whom performed in the cinema that month).

1   "Drawing?"
- the very first of our daily 'artists in residence' challenges the standard notion of 'drawing' by doing a thing with detritus found in the building. Note: we do not really have a resident rabbit population.

2   "Bar Volunteers Draw Tusk"   (00:30)
- the bar at the Star & Shadow funds most of our rent, and is entirely staffed by volunteers. Throughout the Tusk (experimental noise) festival from 5 - 7th October, I badgered everyone who helped on the bar to draw one of the performers, and got over 30 drawings as a result.

3   "Drawing by Bicycle"   (00.50)
- Star & Shadow volunteers were invited to take up the challenge of drawing whilst on bicycles, and this is what they did.

4   "Drawing with Wax"   (03:00)
- Sam saw the wax crayons & said 'You know that thing where you can melt them? Let's do that.' He later screenprinted on the result.

5   "An Open Space for Drawing"   (03:30)
- drawing was not supervised or 'managed' at the cinema: instead materials were left out and invitations were displayed. What then happened is entirely down to the unknown stranger.

6   "Zine Making"   (05:30)
- zines are DIY papery productions, in which a person can share their thoughts, experiences & drawing with others. The Star & Shadow hosts a free 'zine box' that people can help themselves to, and a photocopier with which zines like this are made.

7   "Drawn Diaries"   (06:10)
- the Canny Little Library (open every sunday) on this day hosted two diary-drawing things. One was sketches from a trip to the St.Imier anarchist convergence, another was the production of Wor Diary, an illustrated collaborative diary in which a different person draws each week.

8   "Rain and Water"   (06:46)
- to be clear, the 'artist in residence' was about saying 'anyone's an artist' and challenging the very notion. So on this day we made raindrops the artist in residence.

9.   "Exquisite Corpse"   (07:50)
- our take on the parlour game that was adopted by the Surrealists. Drawing together is good, the results can never be predicted.

10   "A 24 hour comic"   (09.35)
- one beautifully uncontrolled international conspiracy is that of making 24 hour comics: in 24 hours you draw 24 pages and then, if you wish, share them. Here's one made on the 20th October, incorporating the 'Goat' gig at the Star and Shadow.

11   "Work by some 'artists in residence'"   (10:50)
- despite intending to undo the idea of 'good' artists, some of our residences actually produced some fine work.

12   "Crapazine Defacement Workshop"   (11:50)
- most images we are bombarded with are shitty and trying to make us buy things, worry about our looks, or interest us in deeply uninteresting things. They deserve to be defaced and you should always carry a marker pen with you for this purpose.

13   "Drawing Spit"   (13:15)
- a live artpiece was videoed (I have not yet seen it), and the artist then produced a giant picture of spit, as seen in its emergent phase, once gobbed into a pintglass of water.

14   "Paint Splatter"   (14:10)
- advertised as a day to get messy and play with paint, and also used as part of a risk assessment for the evening's wrestling activity. I find the video of feet-painting genuinely beautiful, which is why this is the most extensive part of the video documentation.

15 "Later that Evening"   (19:41)
- drawing by wrestling. This was round 3, at 1 in the morning. A suitable point to end and go to bed.

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