My Brain Is in My Inkstand: Drawing as Thinking and Process Opens at Cranbrook Art Museum in November

My Brain Is in My Inkstand: Drawing as Thinking and Process
Opens at Cranbrook Art Museum in November

Bloomfield Hills, Mich., October 17, 2013 – On November 16, 2013, Cranbrook Art Museum will open a new season of exhibitions examining how the act of drawing impacts both artistic and scientific thinking.

Through the new major exhibition, My Brain Is in My Inkstand: Drawing as Thinking and Process, and the accompanying traveling exhibition, The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking, Cranbrook Art Museum will examine how sketches on paper are the first materialized traces of an idea, and how they are used as an instrument to make a meandering thought concrete.

An exhibition examining the work of Cranbrook’s first Resident Ceramic Sculptor, Waylande Gregory: Art Deco Ceramics and the Atomic Impulse, will also open on November 16.

With an opening weekend full of live performances and work from artists and scientists, a basketball coach and skateboarder, a biologist and even Native American Indians, the exhibitions promise to take you on a journey, demonstrating that if you can think it you can do it – but first you must draw it.

My Brain Is in My Inkstand: Drawing as Thinking and Process
November 16, 2013 – March 30, 2014

An original new exhibition organized by Cranbrook Art Museum brings together 22 artists from around the world to redefine the notion of drawing as a thinking process in the arts and sciences alike.

Inspired by the accompanying exhibition The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot, the exhibition uses multiple sources to show how drawings reveal the interdependency of mark making and thinking. Featured artists include John Cage, Front Design, legendary basketball coach Phil Jackson, Mark Lombardi, Tony Orrico, Tristan Perich, Ruth Adler Schnee, Carolee Schneemann, and many more practitioners from around the world. The exhibition will also incorporate work from the collections of Cranbrook Institute of Science and the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.

Artist Tony Orrico (pictured above) will conduct a live public performance from 11am – 3pm on both Saturday, November 16 and Sunday, November 17 as he continues a three-day process of creating a drawing that will remain in the Museum for the duration of the exhibition. Artist and composer Tristan Perch will install a live Machine Drawing that uses mechanics and code to cumulatively etch markings across a Museum wall.

The title of the exhibition derives from a quotation by American philosopher, mathematician, and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce, whose work involving the over- and under-laying of mathematical formulas with pictographic drawings will be presented for the first time.

Organized by Cranbrook Art Museum and curated by independent curator Nina Samuel.

The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking
November 16, 2013 – March 30, 2014

Focusing on the work of mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot (1924 – 2010), this exhibition explores the role of images in scientific thinking. Featuring works on paper, photographs, objects, and films, viewers can take an inside look at aspects of a new world of ideas that became popularly known as fractal geometry and chaos theory.

Organized by the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, New York, and curated by independent curator Nina Samuel.

Waylande Gregory: Art Deco Ceramics and the Atomic Impulse
November 16, 2013 – March 23, 2014

Waylande Gregory (1905 – 1971) was one of the leading figures in 20th-century American ceramics, helping shape Art Deco design in the United States. In 1931 and 1932, he served as Resident Ceramic Sculptor at Cranbrook Academy of Art, and helped develop the Academy’s ceramics program. Although he worked at Cranbrook for only 18 months, Gregory produced several well-known sculptures here, including Kansas Madonna and Girl with Olive, both of which are featured in the exhibition.

Organized and circulated by the University of Richmond Museums, Virginia, and curated by independent ceramics scholar Dr. Thomas C. Folk.

Opening Weekend Activities

Visit during the opening weekend and take part in activities, live performances, talks and demonstrations designed to bring the act of drawing to life.

Friday, November 15

Become an ArtMember to take part in these exclusive events. Memberships may be purchased at the Front Desk.

ArtMembers’ Opening Reception: 6-8pm
Meet six of the artists in the exhibition, and curators Nina Samuel and Thomas Folk.

Artist Tony Orrico will conduct a live performance from 6-8pm in the Main Gallery, as he begins the three-day process of creating a drawing that will remain in the Museum for the duration of the exhibition.

From 8-8:30pm, enjoy a rare musical performance by artist and composer Tristan Perich, whose live Machine Drawing will also be activated that night.
__________

Saturday, November 16

Exhibition Opens to the General Public: 11am – 5pm
Tony Orrico continues his live drawing performance, from 11am-3pm in the Main Gallery.

Lecture Marathon: Noon – 5pm
All lectures take place in deSalle Auditorium and are included with regular Museum admission and free for ArtMembers and students with identification.

Corrie Van Sice (Creative Researcher)
Noon
“Cultural Amnesia: Synthetic Biology and the Mechanism of Life”

David Bowen (Studio Artist and Educator)
1pm
“Computing Natural Phenomena”

Chemi Rosado Seijo (Artist and Skateboarder)
2pm
“Art and the Urban Landscape”

Tristan Perich (Artist and Composer)
3pm
“Machine Drawings and the Visual Composition”

Tony Orrico (Visual and Performance Artist)
4pm
“State of Readiness: The Body as an Art Apparatus”

__________

Sunday, November 17

Tony Orrico continues his live drawing performance, from 11am-3pm in the Main Gallery.

Lecture by Thomas Folk (Curator and Ceramics Historian)
4pm
“Waylande Gregory: Art Deco Ceramics and the Atomic Impulse”

__________

Tuesday, November 19

Lecture by Nina Samuel (Curator and Art and Science Historian)
6pm
“My Brain is in My Inkstand: Drawing as Thinking and Process”

Images: Tony Orrico. Photo by Bill E. Meyers. Courtesy of the artist and UB Art Gallery.

Benoît Mandelbrot. Scribbled arrows showing the technique of magnifications of details. Computer-generated prints with scribbles. Collection Aliette Mandelbrot.

Gregory Waylande, Water, 1938, from the Fountain of the Atom, New York World’s Fair, 1939. Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum, partial gift of Patricia Shaw. Photography by R. H. Hensleigh and Tim Thayer.