The annual event celebrating art.
Slow Art Day is Saturday, April 4, 2020 Join Us!
Photo by Greg Neville
Slow Art Good Enough to Eat
October 27th, 2020In April of 2020, Slow Art Day veteran Hedy Buzan co-ordinated an event inspired by Wayne Thiebaud’s edible-looking paintings of food.
Sent out as a ‘Super Challenge’ via Mailchimp, Hedy asked participants to make their own sketch of Thiebaud’s ‘Jolly Cones’ with colored or standard pencils. She also provided hints and step-by-step pictures of her own process, which we include below following Thiebaud’s original:
Gift from the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation to the Laguna Art Museum, 2013, Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
After they completed the challenge, participants were invited by Hedy to send images of their work alongside three observations from the exercise. Following the instructions, Hedy also included this helpful reminder:
“Remember, we are not trying to make a perfect drawing but are using sketching to S L O W down and learn to look.“
Hedy Buzan
The event had several asynchronous participants. One of them, Ellen Brundige, even captured a time-lapse video of her digital drawing, viewable here, the final result of which can be seen below:
Source: Ellen Brundige Tumblr.
Hedy, who helped launch Slow Art Day in 2010, has previously collaborated with the Laguna Art Museum, where the original ‘Jolly Cones’ is exhibited. The Laguna Art Museum had to close this year due to the pandemic but Hedy hopes for further slow looking collaborations.
At Slow Art Day HQ, we have been impressed with the resourcefulness of all the hosts this year as they have found ways to connect people through art across virtual platforms. We love the fun spirit of Hedy Buzan’s challenge and look forward to more innovative Slow Art Day events from this pioneering artist in the future.
– Johanna and Ashley
From STEM to STEAM
October 18th, 2020The STEM acronym has become familiar to many since its introduction in 2001. Now, it is evolving, with the most recent term, ‘STEAM’, also incorporating art. In this post, we profile Dr. Koshi Dhingra, a forefront pioneer in linking STEM subjects with art, and her non-profit: talkSTEM.
With over 30 years of experience in STEM research and education, Dhingra is passionate about letting every child — especially girls and underrepresented youth — access STEM resources. This directly inspired her to found talkSTEM in 2015, which has since become a powerhouse of free material for educators.
As part of talkSTEM, children and students get the chance to have “outside the textbook” STEM mindset experiences with the walkSTEM project, often in connection with art.
Developed by Dr. Dhingra and her partner Dr. Glen Whitney, founder of the National Museum of Mathematics, walkSTEM is a framework for place- or concept-based tours with the aim of seeing the world through the lens of STEM. The talkSTEM and walkSTEM resources are easily accessible and adaptable for a range of ages, places and interests.
In the following video, Dr. Dhingra introduces the talkSTEM YouTube channel, where participants can find hundreds of videos focused on STEM topics.
In the video below, you can view the introduction to a walkSTEM tour by Dr. Whitney in the Dallas Arts District.
The inclusion of art with science, technology, engineering, and math is an exciting development, evident across talkSTEM resources such as:
- This video playlist containing 26 short videos focused on art and math using walkSTEM methods.
- This page containing the Create Your Own walkSTEM framework (click on the appropriate colorful tile for museums).
At Slow Art Day HQ we recently took part in a video call together with Drs. Koshi Dhingra and Paul Fishwick, Distinguished University Chair of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication; Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas, both of whom have great STEAM projects in store for the Dallas area. We are excited to be in discussion with these great minds on the connection between STEM and art, and see clear links to the Slow Art Day aim of getting more people discover the joy of looking at art in new ways.
We have loved learning more about art through a STEM lens, and will keep following talkSTEM’s development.
– Johanna and Phil
Further links: local and state-wide press releases about talkSTEM.
Slow Looking Meditations with the National Gallery
October 7th, 2020During the spring 2020 Covid19 lockdown, the National Gallery in London began releasing 5-minute long art meditation videos on YouTube in order to promote mental wellbeing among the public.
Written by Christina Bradstreet, Courses and Events Programmer at the National Gallery, the meditation videos were produced at home by members of the gallery’s digital team and promoted across social media platforms.
So far, the slow looking video-series has included meditations on:
Turner’s ‘Rain, Steam, and Speed’
Redon’s ‘Ophelia among the Flowers‘
Rosa Bonheur’s ‘The Horse Fair’
Bonington’s ‘An Estuary in Northern France’
Zurbarán’s ‘A Cup of Water and a Rose’
A true slow looking pioneer, Bradstreet is a powerful advocate at the National Gallery for slow programming throughout the year. When we asked her how she first became aware of the power of slow looking, she recalled how she felt as she walked home after attending her first mindfulness class:
“I felt acutely aware of the crunch of my footsteps on the gravel, the air on my skin, the bird song – and I thought, “wow! maybe mindfulness can really help us to savour the sensory details of paintings.”
Christina Bradstreet
Her positive experience inspired her to design a range of events at the gallery, such as finding wonder in familiar paintings like Van Gogh’s ‘The Sunflowers’, mindful looking, drawing sessions, and, during the lockdown, the above meditation videos.
Picture courtesy of the National Gallery.
The first two slow looking videos have been an enormous success, with an average of 16,000 hits each on Youtube, and a total of 260k hits and counting across the gallery’s social media platforms.
Viewers have also given strongly positive feedback:
“Well done. Please do more.”
“*Delightful*”
“Fabulous meditation! Thank you so much for these slow looks.”
“Soul touching and relaxing with a new breath of freshness.”
“I’ve seen this painting many times but I never saw the hare, or the people at the side of the river [in Turner’s ‘Rain, Steam, and Speed’]. Thank you so much!”
Participant Quotes
Bradstreet also shared with us some thoughts on the design of these 5-minute videos:
Rather than simply offering a slow looking experience, I’m interested in choosing meditation techniques that connect with the paintings content or how it was painted, so that the art and the meditation enhance one another. For example, in the video on Rosa Bonheur’s The Horse Fair, I explore the theme of the commotion of the busy horse fair as a metaphor for the busy mind, and think about how we might stay mindful when the world is chaotic around us. Clearly, these themes can be taken much further in a longer meditation. However, we have kept these short, partly because many of our audience will be beginners at meditation, and partly because we don’t want to add to online fatigue!
Christina Bradstreet
The National Gallery has truly captured the essence of slow looking within these meditation videos, and I have loved incorporating the short art meditations into my own workday as a way to relax. I recommend that you do the same.
I and the whole Slow Art Day HQ team hope that these videos inspire more slow looking around the world. We can’t wait to see what Christina Bradstreet and the National Gallery in the UK design for Slow Art Day 2021.
– Johanna