DRAWING CHALLENGE XII

We are pleased to announce Nathaniel Galka, Maja Kihlstedt, Linda Stillman, Lorraine Tady, Jackie Tileston, and Mary Wheeler as the featured contestants of our Drawing Challenge XII which was inspired by words from Pablo Neruda's 
“Keeping Quiet". Though written in the 1950s, this extraordinary poem was published posthumously in the
bilingual edition of "Extravagaria" (1974).
We would like to thank the artist Susan Schwalb for submitting these lines.
 

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Linda Stillman, 12 Skies During Covid, 2020, ink jet print, 24 x 18 inches

“Since 2005 I have been recording the sky everyday, in various media. For 2020 I have been taking square photographs of the sky and posting them on a dedicated Instagram account. This is a montage of sky photos from late April and early May when the Corona virus was at its peak in New York. This daily practice is important to me as a way to mark time and focus on nature; during the Covid crisis it has taken on a new meaning. Like the words in this poem, I stop for a second: I marvel at the timeless beauty of the sky and think about the contrast with the troubles here on earth.”

- Linda Stillman, 2020
www.lindastillman.com

Maja Kihlstedt, When All is Quiet, 2020, graphite on paper, 22 x 30 inches

“For the past few years, my work has dealt with the fragility of our relationship with nature and the planet. The drawings are based on macro closeups of common plants and bio matter, discovering immense complex biological structures. It feels more urgent than ever that we as a species have to change in order to preserve the planet and ourselves.”

- Maja Kihlstedt, 2020
www.majakihlstedt.com

Yuko Shiraishi, keeping quiet, 2020, digital photo with cutout, 8 1/4 x 11 3/4 inches

Jackie Tileston, Parastrata #1, gouache and collage on paper, 30 x 22 inches

“I use abstraction as a form of dis-orienting, undoing what we know in order to be receptive. I want the viewer to be encouraged towards stillness, slowness, and the ability to stay with an image.  What can be known in this mode that might be imperceptible at the high speed of image tsunamis we usually experience? In his essay "Visibility" from "Six Memos for the Millenium", Italo Calvino asks what it means to evoke images of things that are not there when the human race is inundated by a "flood of prefabricated images"

-Jackie Tileston, 2020
www.jackietileston.com