DrawTogether x de Young Museum!!
The day DrawTogether took over the de Young Museum (and drawing inspiration from Ed Ruscha!)
Helllllo DrawTogether/GUT friends! So happy you’re here.
First thing first, you know how I always say NO RULES IN ART? Well…
Just kidding. For now.
On Muscle: Drawing with a chainsaw & our Winner!
Last week, we turned our attention to caring for our creative bodies. Bonnie Tsui, author of On Muscle, showed us a few exercises to build and maintain strength and mobility so we can draw throughout our lifetime. Your drawings and comments in the chat expressed how freeing it felt to use your whole body to make art. One GUT artist showed us how to draw with a chainsaw?! GUT crew, you inspire me every darn day.
Winner of this week’s On Muscle book giveaway is… Katy Bern! Katy, please write to community@drawtogether.studio to claim your copy of On Muscle!
de Youngsters Day Out!
Yesterday was super special, friends.
It was de Youngsters Day Out at the de Young Museum in SF, a day with free admission for Bay Area families and art-making activities. Yours truly was honored to be the 2025 featured artist. A dream come true for a young WendyMac whose grandmother regularly took her to look at art at the de Young, rain or shine. Yesterday, OVER 1,200 PEOPLE VISITED DRAWTOGETHER - and over 7,000 visited the museum!
With the help of an awesome crew from the de Young, Girls Garage, and the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, we hosted six DrawTogether Strangers stations, six drawing tables with art-scavenger-hunt sketchbooks and special pencils I created for the event, and a DrawTogether photobooth with props from the DT set!!
A bunch of the DT/GUT crew came through, too, as did GUT member Anne Kenny who brought me “CUPCAKE TOGETHER” treats which saved my butt in a low bloodsugar moment. (Thank you, Anne!)
The accordion-fold style sketchbook (also known as concertina, or fan fold) I created for the kids is like an art-treasure-hunt and contains creative prompts inspired by some of my favorite works in the de Young’s permanent collection, and the encouragement to “make it your own”.
It was a blast.
So what does all this have to do with the Grown-Ups Table?? For the next few weeks, I’m going to share a few of the sketchbook drawing prompts with you, but grown-ups style. We will talk about the artists and artwork that inspired them, and give us an assignment inspired by the artwork.
Sound good? I’m pretty excited about it. And will be even more excited after I get a little more sleep after yesterday’s epic event.
Alright, let’s do this.
First up, Ed Ruscha.
Words Have No Size
When you walk into the first floor of the de Young Museum, one of the first pieces of artwork you’ll see is this one by artist Ed Ruscha.
The giant painting hangs at the entrance to the galleries for modern and contemporary art, inviting you in. The words, painted in a kind of typeface that reminds me of gravestones, float over this sunset sky. The white letters of “heaven” on the horizon recede into the pale yellow light (callback to value!) This piece is a great example of what Ruscha (pronounced Roo-SHAY) is probably best known for: drawings and paintings of WORDS.
Ruscha is an LA-based artist who began playing with language in his artwork in the 1950’s. He started painting canvases with single words, many of them associated with sounds. Influenced by advertising, and interested in semiotics (the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation) he explored using a word itself as art. (Does a word still mean the same thing removed from a sentence and placed on a canvas and hung in a gallery? Does the sound and meaning change with the color/style/visual presentation? SO MANY QUESTIONS COME UP!) In one interview, Ruscha talked about loving words as artistic subjects because they have “abstract shapes” and have “no size” in contrast to familiar objects like a pencil or telephone — “What’s the real size? Nobody knows…”1
“I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again.” - Ed Ruscha, New Yorker
He began to experiment with tromp l’oeil (tricking the eye is always fun!) and with different media — prune juice, ketchup, maple syrup, gunpowder, and chocolate! (Maybe a future GUT drawing assignment, heh heh.) He played around with the background, turning more recently to mountain backdrops, which reflect his love of the American West. The juxtaposition of his sometimes absurd phrases with the majesty of these mountains has a surprising effect. The words may suggest a story, but they leave a lot of room for your imagination.
Notice anything about Tulsa Slut and how it relates to the background? What if I write it this way: tulsaslut? It’s a palindrome! That Ruscha is so cheeky! This is a man who always wanted to be an artist and found his way to it early. He once said, “I could see I was just born for the job, born to watch paint dry.”2 I love to see his humor and sense of play within his work. He is also always a little distanced, a little cool. Related, Candace really wants me to make sure you all also know that GQ has asked, “Is Ed Ruscha the Most Stylish American Artist?”
Take a look at the photos, and you decide.
Alright, taking inspiration from Ed Ruscha, we are going to start down a path of visual storytelling…. So grab your sketchbook, pens, and colors. And let’s DrawTogether.
The Assignment: Speak Up!
Inspired by the Ed Ruscha-exercise in the de Young scavanger hunt sketchbook. *As seen here*:
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