Drawing and Walking

Catalog description

"To be a body is to be a bridge." Following the peripatetic tradition, this freshman drawing seminar invites students to step out of the static confines of the studio and engage with the city of Philadelphia as a living laboratory. We will explore the city’s infrastructure, its past, present, and future, and its vibrant visual culture as an extended classroom. Through drawing and walking, we will engage in a form of radical attention. In a world defined by the relentless speed of the attention economy, this course proposes the slow, manual act of drawing as a vital site of resistance—a way to reclaim our presence through the "slowing down of the looking." We will treat walking not merely as transit, but as a formal procedure that fuels the creative process. Drawing will become a record of movement—a dynamic, unfixed notation of time and time passing. We will consider drawing as a tool for knowledge production: a way of thinking through the body, making connections, testing ideas, and continuously reassessing the world around us. Drawing, in this context, is not limited to what is seen with the eyes alone. It can emerge through movement, memory, touch, sound, emotion, conversation, spatial awareness, research, wandering, and sustained attention. Together, we will look at how artists, designers, architects, filmmakers, scientists, choreographers, musicians, writers, naturalists, engineers, cartographers, and urban planners have used drawing to study experience, trace ideas, navigate complexity, and make visible what is otherwise difficult to articulate. As a group, we will explore a range of materials and hands-on approaches, including observational drawing, mapping, notation, diagramming, and experimental image-making. Visits to museums, collections, neighborhoods, public spaces, and research sites, alongside conversations with visiting artists, designers, and…