SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — The most traditional form of art was taken and expanded upon in the Pierro Gallery’s new show, “What Is A Drawing?” on display at the gallery until Dec. 15. Curated by Director of Cultural Affairs Sandy Martiny and artist Greg Leshe, the exhibit explores the way artists use drawing to create art and describe feelings. The show features pieces created with the traditional marker and pencil, as well as non-traditional instruments such as pantyhose, bungee cords and silk.
“I wanted to think about drawing as thinking and how artists go through that process while drawing,” Martiny said in an interview with the News-Record at the opening of the exhibit on Nov. 8. “We wanted to represent the different ways artists use line.”
Leshe said that he wanted to explore what drawing is.
“What is it? How does it operate?” he said in an interview with the News-Record at the event. “We wanted as much diversity as we could have, across different mediums that use drawing. We’re getting rid of the expectation that it has to be two-dimensional and flat. We wanted to be thinking out of the box.”
Julia Thomson, a resident of South Orange, has a large drawing in the show called “Four Pillars.” Done with pen on paper, Thomson told the News-Record in an interview at the event that “Four Pillars,” which takes up a wall of the gallery, is the biggest art piece she has ever made.
“I call them scapes,” she said. “They’re not landscapes or seascapes — it’s just kind of floating mind space. I work on the floor, so this is easy to roll up and take out again.”
Thomson said that using pen and paper gives her more control over the art she is making.
“I like the control I have over it, and I like the range pen gives you,” she said. “It’s the traditional way of drawing, but you don’t have to draw for the sake of drawing. It’s a bigger exploration of what it can be.”
Tim Daly also sticks to the traditional materials, using pastels and markers to create his work displayed in “What Is A Drawing?” The three pieces depict airplanes in Hoboken, his hometown. Daly said that using the combination of pastels and markers makes his pieces look like photographs.
“I’m not interested in painting every leaf on every tree,” Daly said in an interview with the News-Record at the event. “But if people can still see it, that’s great.”
The speed of drawing also allows Daly to create more art, which he wants to do.
“It’s fast and it’s durable,” he said. “Pastels are so much like paint. You can blend easily but it’s not liquid. They’re malleable and bendable without being wet.”
Artist Jeanne Marie Wasilik took a different path to drawing, using unorthodox methods. She painted wood panels and then sketched figures using wax paint. The figures are inspired by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, a painter and printmaker.
“As you push it around it cracks,” Wasilik said in an interview with the News-Record at the event about the paint she used. “When is something drawing and when is it not? At what point does it become a painting, and what difference does it make?”
London Tsai took a more methodical approach to his work, using charcoal on paper to create the two large pieces hanging in the gallery. With both an undergraduate and master’s degree in mathematics, Tsai visualized equations and formulae.
“I was living in Seattle and spent a lot of time in the University of Washington math department,” Tsai said in an interview with the News-Record at the event. “I was working on making visualizations for mathematics. A lot of us see images when we read, so this is that visualization of a sequence and equations.”
Tsai has moved away from drawing and mostly creates sculptures now, but eventually wants to return to using only paper and drawing materials.
“It’s interesting to see drawing,” he said. “It’s great because it’s so simple and so powerful.”
Not all pieces in the exhibit were done on paper to be hung on the wall. Jillian Clark used a snap line tool, often used by construction workers to mark where work will be done, to cover the fireplace in the gallery in blue chalk lines.
“It’s great because I don’t have to carry it around,” Clark joked in an interview with the News-Record at the event. “When I do something like this I start by looking at the space and building it around that.”
She fills the snap line with chalk and stretches it across the surface, and then releases it to create a line. She repeats the process over and over until the piece is complete. Clark learned the process when she was in graduate school, where she came across the tool while working in furniture and textile design.
“I got tired of lugging things around,” Clark said. “We would use it with textiles, and I thought ‘Let’s use chalk and see what happens.’ I like it because it’ll blow away and people will step in it. It’s there for a moment and then it’ll be gone.”
Katie Truk’s work in the show is three-dimensional. She created three sculptures out of pantyhose and thread, which represent reverberations, memories and ripple effects.
“They’re translucent and 3D and you can see them from every side,” Truk said about her work, which is sitting in the middle of the Pierro Gallery floor. “It’s using lines, just in a different way. Any line is a drawing, technically. They create their own shadows and create their own shapes and forms, which are drawings.”
Other artists featured in “What Is A Drawing?” include Orly Cogan, Daren Kendall, William Lamson, Ryan Roa, Travis LeRoy Southworth, JoJo Whilden and Charles Yuen. It will be on display in the Pierro Gallery at the Baird, 5 Mead St. in South Orange, until Dec. 15.
Photos by Amanda Valentovic
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