Statement

Students from my Fall 2024 Drawing 101 course were tasked with creating a series of non-objective, abstract works exploring analog drawing (hand-drawn mark-making in the language of line) that examined the concept of making visible, invisible dimensions of human life. Students were to explore the unseen neurological processes behind emotions and consider how the mind converts and translates internal states into physical expression. As students developed their ideas, additional art elements were incorporated. However, no symbols or words were to be used in making the work.

Lines and marks have the potential to represent emotional circuits and neural pathways of the intangible, “unseen” processes taking place in our brains that give rise to our feelings. Students were asked to consider (for example), what sort of line (or series of lines) might one make to bring visibility to a unique internal, emotional processes? What does it feel like to make marks associated with a specific emotion? Without using recognizable symbols, students attempted to tap into unconscious expression, which parallels the brain’s own invisible forces that drive our emotional lives. Allowing emotions to “draw themselves” through intuitive mark-making and embodied cognition made it possible to bypass literal representation and open a more direct, spontaneous, non-verbal sensory connection to the experience.

Artist Bios

The group submission is made up of undergraduate student artists from an introductory drawing 1 course at Wilson College in Chambersburg, PA. Students range from first-semester students to seniors approaching graduation in May of 2025. A few students
are graphic design majors. However, most are majoring in disciplines outside of the arts or design. One student is in Early Education, another in Environmental Science, one in Business, one in Sports Management and another in Exercise Sports Science. The unifying element of the group is that they chose to take drawing in the fall of 2024, and
were excited to make work for submission to this exhibition.