Drawing and Creative Writing

Drawing and Creative Writing is a dynamic mix of hands-on drawing studio time and guided writing assignments. This hybrid studio course invites students to experience the perceptual power of drawing and the written word in concert. Drawing and writing are at the roots of most works of art. An intensive practice of these disciplines gives us a marvelous, meditative place from which to learn about the art one can make, uniquely, and about the wisdom of "beginner's mind." This course is open to everyone. We will get our hands dirty with the ABCs of drawing, look closely into the visual dimensions of language, make up semiotic games, word-shapes, and in general use drawing to experiment with inventive tensions between text and image. What does it mean to draw with the eyes of a writer? Or to write like an artist? We will see that our work can be both an artifact and a portal that leads to transformative chains of associations. Here are key tools for visual thinking and problem solving and growing our imagination. And as we play with poem-pictures and word-works and images of writing as we interrogate their cross-pollinations, purposes, possibilities our aim will also be to repair our ability to pay sustained attention. So we'll work to expand our awareness, see with fresh eyes, challenge stereotypes, allow wild ideas to flow, and come into direct contact with surprising art. We will look at art history as artists.