Sketch-22

Despite technology, some still prefer the personal touch

Comments (0) By Julie Peterson Thursday, Jul 19 2007

Give us a CrackBerry smartphone with notepad and camera, and we'll still be brainstorming on cocktail napkins, sketching in beach sand, and staring longingly at blank walls, because Homo sapiens' urge to scribble cannot be sublimated, baby. Fortunately for artists, we also appreciate the doodlings of others. Cassandra Coblentz, associate curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, riffs on why: "One of the things that sustains people's interest in drawing is the notion of intimacy -- that it references a certain moment in time when the mark was made."

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In SMoCA's "southwestNET: drawing outside the lines" exhibition, those moments are super-recent. All 10 featured artists created new work for the show, and several pieces were created directly on the gallery walls (and on the floor, the rafters, and, in the case of San Antonio's Chris Sauter, negative space he carved in a wall with a jigsaw). "The artists were all here to varying degrees for about a week," Coblentz says. "They did sort of joke that it was like being at camp."

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