As the Cleveland Museum of Art continues its centennial celebration, the museum hosts a free, daylong, community-wide drawing event this weekend. Draw Together: A Big Draw Event is part of the Big Draw Festival, a worldwide, month-long celebration of drawing. Approximately 400,000 people participated last year across all seven continents, and this year is expected to be even bigger and better. Although the Big Draw Festival lasts all month, the CMA’s event will take place for one day only – from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Sunday, Oct. 9.
“Draw Together at the Cleveland Museum of Art is an event where all types of people can share the joy of drawing,” says Seema Rao, director of intergenerational learning at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “They will be able to draw from collection artworks, see how local artists can be inspired by the collection and make wildly creative works of their own. It will include everything from traditional still life drawing to robots drawing, which complements the theme of this year’s Big Draw Festival. Don't be worried you can’t draw––everyone who has doodled has drawn.”
This year’s theme for the Big Draw Festival is “The STEAM Powered Big Draw Festival,” combining Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. STEAM represents the campaign to add arts to the core curriculum of STEM.
In conjunction with SPACES, home of Cleveland’s Monster Drawing Rally (an annual event featuring 100 artists drawing live in the gallery), the CMA has invited more than a dozen local artists to draw live in the museum’s galleries.
Participating artists include: Augusto Bordelois, Sequoia Bostick, Lane Cooper, Mallorie Freeman, Timothy Herron, George Kozmon, Mark Krieger, Mike Meier, Eric Neff, Arabella Proffer, Darius Steward, Julie Friedman, Derrick Quarles, JenMarie Zeleznak.
The afternoon also includes an opportunity to “learn alongside the masters,” with the museum’s teaching artists helping guide guests as they draw in the galleries, including the Armor Court. Guests can also participate in drawing games in the museum’s atrium.
The Big Draw Festival began as a one-day celebration of drawing in the United Kingdom in October of 2000 with 180 partner organizations. For the past 15 years, the annual, month-long festival has encouraged over three million people to draw. Last year’s festival featured over 1,000 partner organizations. The event has inspired two world records: longest drawing in the world (one kilometer) and the greatest number of people drawing simultaneously (over 7,000). For more information on other events, visit thebigdraw.org.
(Cleveland Museum of Art) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7340, clevelandart.org
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