About

Image courtesy of the artist, Maren Henson

Draw itOUT!

This drawing program and exhibition encourages students and faculty to build upon developing skills, explore drawing in changing, incisive ways toward individual and collective study, research, and long-term growth. In recent years, there has been growing interest in drawing as a broad practice with many applications and understandings concerning all it might include. This extends towards various disciplines & visual forms of engagement: the broader interest is partially due to developing technologies and increased inter-disciplinary approaches regarding artistic practice.

Workshops:

Artist-led workshops take place in the Meyerhoff Gallery daily; content is collected and exhibited in the gallery.

Concepts and critical conversation:

• Contemporary Drawing as a question, investigation.

• Drawing can be considered as an inherent form of activism

• The notion of ‘drawing’ as both an open activity or process of making as well as the resulting object (verb/action & noun/thing)

• A collective, MICA program exploring drawing as an open practice with various applications.

• Gallery as an active, changing exhibition space; a center for collaboration, research, outside viewership and audience engagement

Objectives:

• Collective, participatory engagement with community through drawing

• A dynamic, physical exhibition that presents the results of daily workshops through installations and texts with curatorial reflections and images posted on website.     

• Participants will engage with a wide variety of tools, surfaces, prompts 

• Exposure to a range of drawing practices and disciplines

• Deepen the discourse around complexities of drawing: values, politics, and making

• Participatory web presence

Curators:

Renee van der Stelt:  Co-Curator with Gerald Ross for Draw itOUT!, Renee van der Stelt currently teaches Critical Studies and Studio courses as faculty mentor in MICA's MFA in Studio Art (MFAST) program. She is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Interim Director of Kohl Gallery at Washington College, Chestertown, MD. In the past, she has worked in a variety of capacities as instructor of various drawing studio courses, Critical Studies and Professional Practice. She has worked as a museum educator, registrar, curator & assistant curator at organizations such as the Walker Art Center, El Museo del Barrio, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at UMBC, Cornell College in Mount Vernon, IA and Redeemer College in Hamilton, ON.  She was resident artist at the MacDowell Colony, Roswell Artist in Residence program, and Kaus Australis, and has exhibited her work widely.  She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Baltimore Office for the Promotion of the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the TKF Foundation. 

Gerald Ross: Co-curator with  Renee van der Stelt for Draw itOUT!, Ross is the Director of Exhibitions at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. He was born in Laramie, Wyoming in 1965. He received a degree in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1989, where he was also a Yale scholar. In the 1990s he collaborated on six public mural projects, receiving numerous awards. Ross continues to peruse his studio art and shows regularly in the region. He has also served as a juror for many fine art awards, including the Trawick Prize and the National Sculpture Residency Prize at Evergreen House. As Director of the Exhibitions Department at MICA, Gerald manages a diverse, energetic and vital program - installing over 100 exhibitions per year, campus-wide. Since 2003, he has curated exhibitions, established public programming and has worked with the community to bring a large variety of local, national, and international groups and artists to MICA.