The next artist to visit PAUSE is Karen Brummund.  Presently hailing from Ithaca, Karen has long been working with ideas about drawing, time, and space.

For PAUSE, she is inviting the public to make drawings of the brick wall that frames the otherwise vacant lot at 535 Main St. in Poughkeepsie.  Yesterday we had the pleasure of working with two 4th grade classes at Governor Clinton Elementary School in Poughkeepsie, NY to jump start this effort. She will be incorporating these drawing into a video installation.

The project builds on a series of video installations that Karen has been doing over the last few years.  Recently she completed a participatory project at 126 Sears Street in Ithaca that addressed peoples perceptions of Greek Revival architecture. She wrote this recently on her blog

“The vacant lot is a little piece of green landscape in the city. It stops abruptly at the unremarkable side of another building. This video installation draws attention to the negative and positive space in the cityscape. Your participation echoes the paintings of the Hudson River School artists, who observed and responded to the landscape around them in a new way.”

If you are interested in participating in the project you can pick up information at the Middle Main office at 317 Main Street in Poughkeepsie. Or you can download the following packet here and email a high-resolution scan of your drawing directly to the artist.

You can use either of the two photographs to base your drawing. There is a guide for the first photograph, if you would like assistance with your drawing. Click on them to see the larger file and download. You can draw on any sized surface. To maximize your drawing for the video, use strong colors and clear marks. A graphite drawing will look fine if it has good contrast. Minimize the amount of white space you leave on your drawing.

You are invited to come to the installation on June 27th and 28th at 8:30pm at the Metropolitan Block 535 Main Street, Poughkeepsie, NY.