Drawings
District Arts

955 S. Eton
Birmingham, MI 48009

248-258-9300
www.districtarts.com

January 15 – February 19, 2005
Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 am - 5:00 pm


The reading of a blank slate is irreversibly altered with the introduction of but a single mark across its surface. From the interaction of line and surface we create meaning. The line carries with it an emotion, a feeling, or a representation of something we know. Additional marks add to the overall complex reading of the piece put in motion by that single original line.


District Arts presents a drawing exhibition featuring six quite distinct artists, all of them involved in their own unique issues. Yet as a whole, these all address a common theme: the interpretation of a mark. The act of mark making is older than we are as a species. Dinosaurs no doubt dragged their talons through the sand. Yet what we do that is unique is to translate that mark into something meaningful within ourselves. And in fact, we are able to agree (at least to some degree) on a shared meaning of that mark or collection of marks. This begs the question: did some early human make that first mark with the intent to create an image or did that person come across an already made mark and set to work interpreting it? But no matter, this is a chicken and egg problem, and this exhibition offers the opportunity to explore the intentionality of mark making in a variety of means of expression.





On one hand of the spectrum, there is the work of Sue Carman-Vian, which is the most representative in the show. Through a particular assemblage of marks, she has created imagery both narrative and whimsical of childhood and fantasy. Through our eyes, it is hard to see them as anything but stories, yet at their core they are nothing but a particular arrangement of marks. Ben Hall composes his lines in quite a different matter, setting down fields of ruled-out parallel segments, a background which his clusters of geometric forms hover above. While these are strictly geometric forms, one can’t help but read them as flocks of birds, animate in flight. In fact, Hall goes one step further in one piece by making paper three-dimensional “birds” and attaching them to the sky of the white paper.


Throughout his work, Hartmut Austen dances between representation and pure composition. This alternation exposes the blurriness of the boundary that separates the two – what’s certain is that he makes marks in order to present certain meaning. This can be achieved through something we recognize as something else or something we recognize for how it affects us. Steve Brown works tends toward representation, as he creates house-like forms from a collage of marks and layers of paper. He creates windows in form and in function by tearing through outer layers to reveal the activity on the layers below. This literal build up and tear down on the paper, suggests a reference to the architecture of the city of Detroit in particular, at once massively built up while falling down around us at the same time. Rose Schueller introduces a delightful bit of bright color to her works, which like Vian’s have a definite air of whimsy about them, yet function far more in the realm of the abstract. There are obvious recognizable forms drawn and collaged, but their juxtaposition and placement on the page, speak to issues of composition. She takes us into a dream where things make sense on an intuitive level, but that feeling shifts as we try to rationally put all the pieces together.





Miroslav Cukovic’s work stands out in that it encompasses both the history and possibilities of drawing. A mark can be an abstraction, a physical thing, an element of representation, and read as script (for what is a letter but a further level of abstraction of something visual to stand in for something two steps removed?) Cukovic weaves together all these possibilities. Through the accumulation of numerous marks both drawn and scratched through the paper he creates an atmosphere that builds into nearly solid, representational forms. And really this is what drawing is all about – applying marks to surface and letting meaning emerge from their interaction.


Differences aside, these artists sit well alongside one another, each one’s unique methods informing the reading of the others’, and all helping to offer an interpretation of what drawing is. – Nick Sousanis

ws@thedetroiter.com