Friends of the Davison Art Center

The Friends of the Davison Art Center present the second annual The Big Draw: Middletown, a community celebration of drawing with workshops for people of all skill levels, from beginners to accomplished artists. The event is free and open to the public: adults, students, and children ages five and up. The Big Draw’s activities break down the “I can’t draw” syndrome and celebrate the visual arts.

The Big Draw: Middletown will feature 7 drawing workshops throughout the Wesleyan University campus. Wesleyan art professors and art students, Middletown public school art teachers, and members of the Middletown High School Art Club will facilitate the workshops. The wide range of activities will include illustration, Japanese sumi-e ink drawing, and movement and drawing. Participants will draw from live models, period costumes, the natural world, dancers, and the imagination. Drawing study of nude models is open to adults and minors with parental permission. The event will take place rain or shine.

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The Big Draw: Middletown
Saturday, April 20, 2013 1pm–4pm

Onsite registration: Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, 301 High Street
Free and open to the public
No advance registration required

Drawing workshops and activities 1pm–4pm

Drawing Workshops:

1. Model Marathon
Drawing the nude model
Drawing Studio (CFA Art Workshops room 105)
Parental permission required for those under 18

2. Still-Life and the Natural World
Study the natural world with an exciting array of objects including shells, taxidermied animals, skulls, etc. in an elaborate still life.
Location: Beckham Hall, upstairs

3. Movement and Drawing
Participants will create drawings through exercises that use making marks through movement as the subject matter. There will be live musicians to respond to while creating drawings, and dancers to draw. Try using your arm as a compass, or creatinge lines by walking and and dragging charcoal behind you. Good for all ages, g. Get ready to be experimental!
Location to be confirmed.

4. Tableaux vivants
Go back in time and draw from models in 19th- and early 20th-century costumes in the historic Alsop House. Organized by the Middletown High School Art Club, under the leadership of Patrick Shugrue.
Location: Davison Art Center, in the Alsop House rooms

5. ‘Sumi-e’ Ink Drawing
Introduction to Japanese traditional sumi-e drawing with ink. Taught by Keiji Shinohara.
Location: Beckham Hall

6. Fragments from the Davison Art Center
Make your own masterpiece inspired by the Davison Art Center collection. Paper will be distributed with a fragment of an image sampled from a DAC print—then you “fill in the print” with drawing.
Location: DAC Alsop House sunroom.

7. Telling Drawn Stories
Try your hand at comics, illustration, zines, and the art of telling stories in sequence.
Location: Beckham Hall

The Big Draw: Middletown is sponsored in part by the Friends of the
Davison Art Center; the Wesleyan University Division of Arts and
Humanities, and the Middletown Commission on the Arts, artstogo.org.

The Artful Lunch” with Suzy Taraba that was scheduled for this Friday, December 7 has been postponed to next semester. Stay tuned for updates!

Tags: Artful Lunch, Suzy Taraba

Don’t miss the final weekend to see Andrew Raftery: Open House! The last day of the exhibition at the Davison Art Center is Sunday, December 9, 2o12. The gallery hours are from 12-4pm. Hope to see you there!

Andrew Raftery (American, born 1962), Open House: Scene One, 2008. Engraving. Courtesy of the artist and Mary Ryan Gallery, New York.

Photo by Rich Schmitt/Staff Photographer

In 1984, Weston Naef became founding curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, an action that took the art world by surprise and forever changed the position of photographs in art museums around the world. For 25 years before his retirement from the Getty in 2009, he guided the growth of the Museum’s photograph collection, directing more than 100 exhibitions and 50 publications. He is the author of numerous books, including Era of Exploration: The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West: 1860-1885 (with James N. Wood) and Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs (with Christine Hult-Lewis).

In this Virgil and Juwil Topazio Lecture on Thursday, October 18, 2012 at 5:00 pm, Naef will discuss contemporary photographers who are using traditional materials in new ways. Free and open to the public at the Russell House.

One work, one speaker, 15 minutes.

The Friends of the Davison Art Center invite you to the next installment of our Artful Lunch series with Jennifer Tucker, Associate Professor of History.  The FDAC is proud to present this series that invites Wesleyan faculty to talk about their favorite works in the DAC collection. Join us at the Davison Art Center on Tuesday, October 9 at 12:10pm. Bring your bag lunch and enjoy coffee, homemade cookies, and conversation.

Tags: Artful Lunch Series, Jennifer Tucker

Led by noted collector and Wesleyan professor Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, the Friends of the Davison Art Center invite you to join us on a tour of photography galleries in New York City.

The trip is planned for Saturday, November 3 from 11am-5pm. Ticket price is $50 for FDAC members and $55 for non-members and includes a prix-fixe lunch (transportation not included). Reservations are required and can be made by telephone at 860-685-3355 or in person at the Wesleyan University Box Office.

Tags: Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, galleries, New York City

The Wesleyan Institute for Lifelong Learning and Friends of the Davison Art Center are offering a short course on Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Garry Winogrand, and associated photographers titled Picturing America: Highlights of 20th-Century Photography, which will be taught by the DAC’s own Curator Clare Rogan. Class tuition is $70 and will take place form 6-7:30pm on October 3, 10, and 17, 2012. To register for this course, contact the Wesleyan Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Clare Rogan is curator of the Davison Art Center and an adjunct assistant professor in the art history program at Wesleyan. She teaches courses on the history of prints, history of photography, and museum studies. Her publications include articles on early lithography and German art of the early 20th century.

Andrew Raftery (American, born 1962), Open House: Scene One, 2008. Engraving. Courtesy of the artist and Mary Ryan Gallery, New York.

Join us for an artist talk by Andrew Raftery today, September 18, 2012 at 5pm at the CFA (reception at the Davison Art Center to follow). The exhibition Andrew Raftery: Open House will be at the DAC from now until Sunday, December 9, 2012. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Sunday, 12-4pm. The exhibition will be closed October 13-16 and November 19-26.

The exhibition and accompanying catalog were organized by the Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, and funded in part by the Kalkin Family Exhibitions Endowment Fund and the Walter Cerf Exhibitions Endowment. Support for this exhibition at Wesleyan comes from the Lemberg Fund.

Picturing America: Highlights of 20th Century Photography
Three Wednesdays, 6:00–7:30 pm, October 3, 10, and 17, 2012

Ansel Adams, Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1944. Gift of Russell G. D’Oench, Jr.

Join the Wesleyan Institute for Lifelong Learning and the Friends of the Davison Art Center for this short course on highlights of twentieth-century American photography.
Sessions will discuss Alfred Stieglitz’s promotion of art photography from photo-secession to modernism, the f/64 group including Ansel Adams, and street photography of the 1960s and 1970s by Gary Winogrand and others. Taught by Curator Clare Rogan, the course will meet at the Davison Art Center to view selected photographs in the collection.
Class tuition: $70. To register for this course or to find out more information about other courses offered through this program, contact the Wesleyan Institute for Lifelong Learning at http://www.wesleyan.edu/will/.

Tags: Ansel Adams, art photography, Clare Rogan, Gary Winogrand, lifelong learning

City-Wide Open Studios is a large-scale convening of visual artists from across Connecticut in studios and temporary spaces around New Haven. This annual event is hosted by Artspace from October 5-24, 2012. Last year over 300 artists participated in City-Wide Open Studios, and with help this festival can continue to grow! Find more information on City-Wide Open Studios can be found at www.CWOS.org.