Drawing Out

About

Drawing Out is an exhibition featuring drawings made by elementary and high school students who participated in The Drawing Center’s 2022–2023 education programs: Drawing Connections and Drawing All Stars 2.0 with Teen Art Salon. Serving students locally in New York City, our education offerings encourage young people to develop their own artistic practices and examine drawing’s role in contemporary culture and creative thought.

Drawing All Stars 2.0 is a free pre-professional development program for high schoolers, grades 9 through 11, led by Teen Art Salon’s Isabella Bustamante and teaching artist Aneesa Razak in partnership with The Drawing Center. Focusing on New York City’s next generation of artists, the program supports teens to expand their drawing practices and amplify their artistic ambitions. Through discussion and skill-development workshops, young artists build confidence in drafting, planning, and executing works of art, culminating in a large-scale drawing or series by the end of the school year. Over the course of six months, participants strengthened observation skills, catalyzed ideation, and developed individual artistic styles with the goal of pursuing drawing as a medium for experimentation and innovation. In-person sessions took place two weekends a month from January through June 2023 with a schedule of independent creative work during studio training hours at Teen Art Salon in Long Island City and collaborative exercises at The Drawing Center.

Through its long-standing Drawing Connections program, The Drawing Center partners annually with New York City public schools to provide students with an in-depth visual art experience focused on the medium of drawing. This year, The Drawing Center, along with teaching artists Laura Bernstein, Nic Annette Miller, and Avani Patel, partnered with P.S. 42 The Benjamin Altman School, Lexington School for the Deaf, P.S. 47 The American Sign Language and English Secondary School, and Chelsea CTE High School to produce projects inspired by recent exhibitions including Catherine Chalmers: We Rule, Of Mythic Worlds: Works from the Distant Past through the Present and Xiyadie: Queer Cut Utopias. Each curriculum connected topics covered in the students’ classrooms with those addressed in the artworks on view at The Drawing Center. These workshops were delivered in-person with American Sign Language and English