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| 5/12/12, Copic Multiliner SP pen, watercolor |
Urban Sketchers’ Manifesto No. 2: Our drawings tell the
story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel.
I was wandering around the University of Washington campus
on a fabulous sunny day – the kind that Seattleites are willing to wait 10
months of overcast skies for. I’ve visited the campus many times since I
graduated (for the second time) in 1981, but on this visit it seemed like
everything was different. Several new buildings had gone up since my last visit
(PACCAR Hall? What’s that?), and pathways appeared where there used to be
grass. A visitor stopped to ask me where the HUB was, the student union
building where I had eaten many, many meals over the course of six years, and I
had to twirl around to get my bearings before I could point him in the right
direction – that’s how disoriented I felt. It’s hard to be nostalgic about one’s
youth when everything looks different.
I decided to sit in “Red Square” to sketch the Broken
Obelisk (a sculpture by Barnett Newman, 1963), partly because it was far less
daunting than Gothic architecture, but mainly because Red Square looked the
same as when I was a student. In the brick paved plaza that I had crossed
countless times going to and from two libraries on either side, I could
imagine, for a few moments, that nothing had changed. (End of the old fart’s walk
down Memory Lane.)
(This is one of a series of blog posts about how I have
interpreted the Urban Sketchers manifesto.)
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