DRAWING CHALLENGE XI

We are pleased to announce Maya Ciarrocchi, Chris Costan, Blinn Jacobs, Courtney Puckett, and Carol Warner as the featured contestants of our Drawing Challenge XI
which was inspired by words from bell hook's 
"Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope" (2003)
We would like to thank the artist Frank Schellace for submitting these lines.
 

"Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community."

- bell hooks, 2003 -

Courtney Puckett, Populus, 2020, marker, pen, and collage on paper, 14 x 18 inches

”My drawings and collages are two-dimensional conceptual maps for working intuitively in three-dimensions. They generate ideas for my human-scale, found object and repurposed textile sculpture. Currently, I am thinking about how bodies physically connect and how communities are ideologically formed. In a new series of collages, I color and arrange old quilt patterns into geomantic figures. This particular collage is in the formation of a geomantic 'populus' figure which represents a bird's eye view of an assembly of people. Geomancy was a Renaissance method of divination that interprets lines or textures on the earth's ground. There are 16 geomantic figures used as symbols to represent the divinations, or states of the world.”

- Courtney Puckett, 2020
www.courtneypuckett.com

Blinn Jacobs, Ad-infinitum #3, 2020, Ever, Casein, oil pastel on incised gatorboard of different thickness, balsa wood, 20 3/4 x 19 1/2 inches

“The hexagon or parts of it, have been the foundation of most of my work throughout my career inspired by the benzene ring, the basis of life. It connects all the diversity of life on a fundamental level.  

Whether it is the visible phenomenon that bees best demonstrate, or the 60 million year old stepped hexagonal basalt formations of the Giants Causeway on the North Coast of Ireland, it is what these pieces intend to address, communicate, and explore in my visual language.

The wooden strip on the outside edge is an extended line to drawn attention to the adjacent “negative” wall space. It also infers the continuation of the hexagonal module that can repeat without end. The painted shapes within the piece are stepped (different thicknesses) creating a more pronounced division. The incised surface pattern, made more visible with oil pastel, unites the individual shapes with the totality of the planes reflecting an interaction of different colors and transparency.”

- Blinn Jacobs, 2020
www.blinnjacobs.com

Chris Costan, Flesh of My Flesh, VIII, Gouache, acrylic, watercolor paper, 10 x 13 inches

”The idea of a dominator culture has been on my mind for a long time. In recent years I've been learning more about history and the patterns that repeat throughout much of the world. What hooks says is all true and yet in some way it seems that often human beings are so wrapped up in survival that they submit out of necessity because of the fear and chaos. Working on a series of 12, titled Flesh of My Flesh with these concerns in mind they are about "dominators" and dominator culture. This piece alludes to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzer, whose alias was, "destroyer of worlds". The king's faceless hair and headgear is pictured in this small piece. My infatuation with the ancient world is real, but also dashed with the realization that much of the world is dominated by a lust for power and wealth. And we find ourselves in that place now as well.”

- Chris Costan, 2020
www.chriscostan.com

Carol Warner, To Gather Paradise, 2020, acrylic, pencil and ink on canvas, 22 x 28 inches

“I was raised in the Quaker faith and continue this practice as an adult. I believe all voices should be heard. It's so important to create safe spaces for discernment. Individual truths, shared and seasoned in the context of deep communal listening, evolve into greater truths. It's my prayer that we are at a moment of "convulsive change" in which the radical act of deep listening becomes a societal norm. "To Gather Paradise" is personal and reflects the sorrow and hope that I believe we all share at this moment in time. Raised in a mixed race and interfaith family, I know how important it is to acknowledge a person's humanity more than relying on any one ideology or belief system.”

- Carol Warner, 2020
www.carolwarnerstudio.com