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IN OUT ON DRAWING: interweaving architecture and fine art
Marta Cruz, ESAD - College of Art and Design Matosinhos
Paul Berry, ESNBA Lyon
“There really isn’t anything I do that isn’t effectively drawing;
and that’s the aspect of drawing that interests me: that one draws,
not because one knows or to describe, but one seeks to discover.
And the process of discovery is a drawing process”
Roni Horn
IN OUT ON DRAWING is a pedagogical initiative focusing on Drawing both as an operator - a commuter of various dimensions of human experience, and as a tool - generating knowledge and content across fields within the context of Art and Design education.
In the past two years, IN OUT ON DRAWING has taken the shape of a four-day workshop offered to a small group of undergraduate students, challenging them to discover, observe, reason, discuss and draw from within and outside a chosen architectural space.
The starting point of the workshop begins with a visit to an architectural site for a whole day of drawing, followed by two days in the studio/class working from the drawing materials produced on location and ending with the disclosure of the work done in the format of a small exhibition. In the studio/class, the pedagogical approach encompasses both tri-dimensional and bi-dimensional works, relying on an expanded approach to drawing.
In 2023, the first workshop took as its starting point, the Couvent Sainte Marie de La Tourette (Le Corbusier, 1961, Éveux, France) and focused on light and shadow; in 2024, the second workshop’s starting point was at the Casa das Marinhas (Alfredo Viana de Lima, 1957, Esposende, Portugal) and focused on colour and plan.
The workshops were oriented to shed light on these two roles of drawing:
1. drawing as an operator: scale, selection processes, a tool of discovery through experimentation and chance, switching subjects or topics (for instance: from tri-dimensional space to bi-dimensional shapes, from light to texture and colour, from tones to lines, ...)
2. drawing as a tool for engaging the students in generating knowledge from a lived experience, going beyond the mere register of information or facts, and following John Berger on the drawing process: “a line is not really important because it records what you have seen, but because of what it will lead you on to see.”
Stemming from the workshops, IN OUT ON DRAWING is also maturing as an underlying reasoning concerning the following issues we would like to address in this paper:
_ What are the contexts shaping the perception of sensitive and sensorial architectural experiences?
_ How does the body, the eye, the hand and the drawing tool represent space through lines and marks on a surface?
_ What modes of engagement and physical presence encompasses the act of drawing space?
_ By which drawing processes can we foster the generation of new materials relating to the experience of being in space?
_ What role can play the tri-dimensional exploration of the drawings made on location?
_ How is drawing a connecting instrument between perception, memory, ideas and plastic elements?
References:
Berger on Drawing, John Berger, edited by Jim Savage - Occasional Press, 2005, Excerpted from Drawing is Discovery (1953) by John Berger (reprinted in New Statesman, 3-9 May, 2013, 53).
Roni Horn: To Fold in Roni Horn, London Phaidon Press, 2000, pp 30-69.
Keywords: Architecture, Fine Art, perception, embodied experience, process
Biography
Marta Cruz is a professor and researcher in the fields of drawing, domestic space and material culture.
She graduated in Architecture (1998, FAUP) and pursued postgraduate studies in France - DEA (2003, U. Paul Cézanne) and PhD (2009, ENSA Marseille). From 2012 to 2017, she studied Drawing, History of Art, Painting, Illustration and Printmaking as an external student at FBAUP.
Her broad education in Architecture, Fine Art and Social Sciences has been the foothold for an interest in subjects and practices crossing disciplines and fields of knowledge.
At present, she is an Adjunct Professor at ESAD - College of Art and Design, and a Senior Researcher at 'esad-idea', where she coordinates the research line 'album'.
Alongside teaching and researching, she carries out a practice of drawing and painting.
Paul Berry was born in England in 1970, and lives and works in Lyon, France.
After studying at Cheltenham and Gloucester School of Fine Art in England, he trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon in the late 1990s and was invited to teach at the school shortly after graduating. For the past twenty years, he has been training students in drawing.
He is represented by the Galerie Heimat in France.
Solo and group exhibitions and selected projects include at Gallery Heimat (2022), Galerie Tator à Lyon (2017), Centre d'Art de Saint Fons (2016), URDLA de Villeurbanne (2016), La Maison du Peuple de Vénissieux (2012), La Serre à Saint-Étienne (2011).
His work can be found in the collections at Saint Fons Art Center, Ville de Vénissieux, Artothèque - Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon.
