Andy's Window

For those of you reading this who do not know me, my name is Andrew Rush. I am an artist by profession as well as one of the early founders of our amazing institution, The Drawing Studio, begun in 1992.

In the first days of TDS (when I was teaching a lot more than I do now) I particularly enjoyed those moments after class, or over coffee etc. for the kind of informal conversations I often had with students and friends about our experience as art-makers and its relevance to our ideas about life. As we talked about our mutual interest in the more invisible pleasures of art we got to know each other better, sharing what we liked and why, or discussing an artist that recently gave us something new to think about or be annoyed by.

Lately I had been missing those opportunities for conversation, so this spring as a kind of experiment, I scheduled six Wednesday afternoon discussions, open to anyone. About 15 to 20 people came each week and at each session, I introduced a small aspect of the work of one artist that has inspired me recently. And from that ‘window’ into a given artist, each session produced a lively conversation as we shared our reflections about how to really look generously, in order to learn and grow as artists. As our empathy for other art expands, we begin to see how our own visual ‘way’ is but one sliver of a deep river of art-makers with whom we share the journey.

I so enjoyed those six Wednesdays, because my friends who attended shared so many unexpected and distinct ways of looking as we talked, that I think we all expanded our aesthetic world a little bit, including me.

So out of that experience, I am now starting a blog space called ‘Andy’s Window’. Each two weeks I will post a short essay on a single work of one artist. After two weeks, I will replace it with the next essay and image, at which time the last essay will be placed in an available archive.

I intend to hog the space for a few months to get it up and running. But during that time I encourage your comments and responses (short, please). Where we discover some group energy around a topic or artist, we will figure out a way to expand that conversation on-line.

Eventually I intend, once I sense the format is tweaked and re-designed for easy workability, to invite other contributors, subject to certain agreements to work within the ‘words and images’ essay format that we develop.

I invite you to join me and spread the word to visit ‘Andy’s Window’ as an ongoing part of the TDS website.