Drawing as a Way of Knowing - Plants

The workshop's participants will study historical plant samples, explore the Botanical Garden and discover structures with the microscope. The gathered knowledge they will develop into a graphical interpretation of the plant world.

In our workshop you will have the opportunity to deal intensively with botanical phenomena. We start with drawing explorations in front of nature. In the studio we translate these into free artistic expressions.

With three excursions we visit special research sites in Berlin and study the plant world in different ways: Systematics and stylization based on historical models in the archive of the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK); surface structures in the Microscopy Center of the Humboldt University of Berlin; richness of form and complexity in the Botanical Garden. In this first phase of the workshop we will teach drawing techniques that allow you to look more closely and accumulate a broad understanding of natural forms.

During the second phase of the workshop we will meet in the drawing lab of the UdK. In individual supervision you will further develop the inventories. Playing with translation and abstraction, you will expand your graphic vocabulary and transform it into your own interpretations.

Invited are visual artists, architects, designers, as well as self-taught artists with previous knowledge of drawing, who are interested in deepening their study of nature and who want to collectively open up perspectives for their respective artistic practice.

Schedule

Day 1:

Archive of the Berlin University of the Arts

Drawing from historical templates, models and plant samples

Day 2:

Botanical Garden Berlin

Graphic field research

Day 3:

Microscopy Centre of the Humboldt University Berlin

Graphic examination of plant specimen material

Day 4+5:

Berlin University of the Arts Laboratory for Drawing

Free working and individual consultations

Kerstin Hille is a visual artist and head of the laboratory for drawing at the Berlin University of the Arts. After graduating as a master student in 2001 at the weissensee kunsthochschule berlin, she worked at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin in 2004, where she made scientific drawings in the zoology department. As an artist, she works in parallel with drawing and printmaking, forming intersections here and experimentally exploring the possibilities of these two media. Together with Angela Nikolai (née Bösl), she published PFLANZEN FORMEN LEHRE in 2016, which brings together historical and current positions in the study of plants in drawing at the Berlin University of the Arts.

www.kerstinhille.de

 

 

Oliver Thie is a visual artist and researcher from Berlin. In cooperation projects with scientists he establishes hand drawing methods as a way of knowledge production. In 2018 he focused on a collection of minerals in the Temporary Object Lab at Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin. In 2016 he accompanied a biological expedition through the USA to study the social behaviour of aphids. From 2014 to 2016 he was artist in residence at the Natural History Museum Berlin, where he interpreted microstructures on the Hawaiian cave-dwelling cicada (an insect).

www.oliverthie.de