This Wednesday I decided to go check out The Power Plant’s International Lecture Series featuring Swiss-artist Thomas Hirschhorn. My day started out as it usually does when I plan to go to an art event. I sit at my desk and think of every conceivable excuse not to go; laundry, grocery shopping, headache, I even threw in grant writing for good measure. However, the excuse that weighed in most was this: I didn’t want to be disappointed again. The thought of sitting through 40 slides of cardboard with the inevitable verdict that “my art is/was/can save the world” seemed too much. That said, I went, if not to prove myself wrong.

Hirschhorns lecture was centered on his most recent public work in Amsterdam’s Bijlmer neighborhood, famed for its application of Corbusier’s architectural manifesto. The project, titled The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival (2009) was described as a two-month long festival that looked to create a place for thought and collaboration within the community. Within the first seconds of the talk my fears of the artist as self-righteous hero were calmed as he prefaced the project being un-related to relational aesthetics. Rather he made work because he believed in art, and perhaps what was more unnerving, he felt the public sphere could help facilitate that belief. In his mind the people did not need help, he needed help. The following are some terms, which have kept me up at night:

Production: He talked of production two fold, his own production, being on site and making (which he considered the role of the artist) and the production of assistants, which for this particular project he paid local.

Precariousness: Someone later told me that this was a “hot” term right now. I simply loved the complexity of it in offering a counterpoint to ‘conservativeness’.

Faith: Hirschhorn asked us why an artist would be an artist if they did not have faith in art? What an asshole! But seriously, why?

I left the talk confused, befuddled, angry, happy, excited, exhilarated, unnervered and -perhaps most importantly- encouraged.

To preface this, I am a drawer. According to Microsoft Word, this infers I am “a storage compartment in a piece of furniture such as a desk, chest, or table that slides in and out and is usually shaped like a shallow rectangular box”. To be honest I like to think of my practice as an artist in terms of a storage unit for ideas, concepts and techniques (This as I hope you have already noticed, is a sarcastic play on the term Drawer as both defining a person who draws and a vessel for storing undergarments – amongst other things). It is due to this awkward phrasing of the word that it is so difficult to associate oneself with the medium. I myself have difficulty pronouncing my R’s. As a result I end up describing, in an excruciatingly roundabout way what I do as an artist – often I dream about how easy it would be to simply state “I am a Painter”, “ I am a Sculptor”, “I am a “Video artist”. In my assumption, it is drawing’s lack of an adequate (and pronounceable) noun that lends the medium to its considered state as merely a point of departure for other artistic disciplines; a sketch, draft, outline, proposal. Drawing then is never finite; it exists as a rhetorical medium in the arts.

Because of my work as a drawer (look to definition above), I was invited to participate on two drawing projects in November: moderator for a panel discussion on drawing at XPACE and Juror for the National Drawing Exhibition at the White Water Gallery.

Rather than moving in chronological order, I will begin with my experience as a member of the jury at the drawing exhibition in North Bay. I was lucky enough to have had help with this project, splitting the juror duty with fellow drawer Amanda Burk. The national call conjured up some exceptional talent including Sara Hartland-Rowe’s beautifully fantastical drawings depicting street/urban follies, and Liv Bonli’s strikingly minimal depictions of board and branch structures. Going back to my statement that drawing is never finite, the success of these works lie in their ability to utilize the propositional nature of drawing. These drawings do not settle on mere representation, rather they offer us a space for contemplation of the unreal and slightly peculiar.

If there is one constant amongst the drawings selected, it is their ability to be simultaneously critical and hopeful. All too often art (painting I am looking at you) that is critical is plagued by a sense of overt cynicism, while hopeful art (painting I am still looking at you) can fall into the trap of romanticizing. The drawings in Order and Chaos and the White Water Gallery Juried Exhibition seem to offer equal potions of both; their heads raised up high, acknowledging their critique, however upon closer inspection of their eyes you can read shinning gleam of hope.