STUDENT WORK: BALLPOINT PEN DRAWINGS JAN - FEB '05

This exhibition focuses on the implementation of the ball point pen as a drawing tool. The medium demands the development of the drawing move ceaselessly forward as opposed to the more typical situation in which the work evolves over a series of corrections or dance of backward and forward steps. Although it is not entirely unforgiving it demands that its inherent qualities of texture, length, sharpness of line, color, temperature, and opacity are reckoned with. The nature of this conversation between the artist and the medium is eccentric in regards to the strength of its peculiar traits. Despite the intentions with which it is mass-produced it can be misused and manipulated by the facile hand, becoming a soft and delicate tool for the representation of a similarly complex subject.

Raphael Sassi, Research Fellow