Local artists have until Monday to express their interest in working with Brooklyn-based painter James Esber on a novel community project.
On Sunday, Feb. 20, Esber — whom The New York Times has described as “an artist working at the top of his game” — will be at New Haven’s Artspace, where up to 18 community members will contribute to a growing collection of portraits of Osama bin Laden.
The project, titled This is Not a Portrait, focuses on “the question of one’s connection or disconnection with the reality of an image that’s been so heavily mediated,” Esber said.
Some 120 drawings have already been created by artists and non-artists alike. About 100 of those drawings were exhibited late last year in Esber’s exhibition You, Me & Everyone Else at Pierogi in Brooklyn. Another 17 were collected from residents of New Orleans when an exhibition of collaborative works by Esber and his wife, artist Jane Fine, were recently shown at that city’s Central City Artist Project.
This is Not a Portrait is unique in that “there’s no drawing done by me directly,” Esber said.
Each participant is given a piece of parchment, beneath which is a drawing Esber made of bin Laden five years ago. Participants are provided with red and black ink and a brush and instructed to trace the lines on the print of Esber’s original. The traced lines can be in any combination of the colors, thick or thin, fine or loose. The result, Esber said, are portraits with three contributing elements: the image each participant has in his or her mind of bin Laden, a self-portrait element given the individual personality each participant brings to a drawing, and Esber’s original.
In her New York Times review of You, Me & Everyone Else, Roberta Smith wrote, “The variety is astounding but not surprising. It suggests that each person, whether a professional artist or not, has a ‘touch’ as well as quite a few ideas about the nature of drawing. It only takes the proper context to bring them out.”
Asked how New Haven-based participants would be chosen, Esber said, “The main criterion, I think, is that the person is enthusiastic about doing it.”
He said, “In some cases, I think it’s better when the person is less-trained in drawing,” and, “I’d like to encourage non-artists to do it.”
Drawings made at Artspace on Feb. 20 will be included in Esber’s exhibit Your Name Here—of which This is Not a Portrait is part — on view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield through June 5.
In addition to the 18 drawings made at Artspace on Feb. 20 as part of SCRAWL, 18 more will be created as part of the Aldrich’s Draw On! program.
Artspace Executive Director Helen Kauder said her interest, with regard to the organization’s participation in Esber’s This is Not a Portrait project, is “in connecting the New Haven arts community with the broader arts community,” and that the Feb. 20 event “ties in with what we’re trying to do with SCRAWL, which is to open up the act of drawing to wider audiences.”
Entry forms must be submitted by e‑mail or fax to Artspace by Monday, though submission does not guarantee participation.