A Year in Residence

The plan is narrow on purpose. One medium: marker on paper. One method: timed drawing from direct observation, with nothing erased. One subject: the people of a shared live/work building, residents and visitors, at work and in passing.

A pose lasts minutes. In a building full of dancers, musicians, designers, writers and filmmakers there is no need to ask anyone to pose at all: a rehearsal, a recording session, a fitting, an opening or an afternoon in a studio is the pose. I draw alongside it, one sheet at a time, each sheet dated, timed and kept in the order it was drawn.

What the year makes

Several hundred sheets, each with its date, its length and its place in its night.
A portrait of the building: every resident who agrees to sit, drawn in minutes in their own studio.
A record kept in the open: each night published on this site sheet by sheet, the way the nights are now.
A wall at the end of the year: the sheets hung together, in the order they were drawn.

What I bring to a shared building

Drawing where the work happens: at a rehearsal, in the recording studio, at a fitting, without stopping it.
A drawing table at open studios, openings and the fair: whoever sits down is drawn in five minutes, in front of whoever is watching.
A model night open to the residents and neighbours who draw: a model, a clock and room to work.
Other disciplines as the subject: a dancer gives movement, a musician rhythm, a designer a silhouette. None of them is asked to become visual art.

Why a shared building, and why here

The practice is urban and social already. It happens where people are, and it has always drawn a crowd without asking for one. I live in Jersey City and have drawn in its rooms since 2017: the Jersey City Art School, Elevator, Mana Contemporary.

What a drawing session cannot give me is people at work rather than posing, a year of the same faces, and a wall large enough to see a year of sheets at once.