Drawing Out: Art Now

OCAD U 150 Celebration
A three-day art festival at OCAD University, The Great Hall

Drawing Out: Art Now is a three-day art festival curated by James Olley and Amy Swartz marking OCAD University’s 150-year legacy through performance, participation, and expanded approaches to drawing. The program foregrounds contemporary art practices in which gesture, movement, and live action intersect with mark-making. In this context, drawing is an act of movement: a way of thinking, understanding, and making through the body, becoming both process and trace.

Erin Finley, Drawing Disco. Image courtesy of the artist.

Drawing Disco
Fundraiser with Erin Finly

A party-meets-performance drawing event.

Tuesday, October 27, 6–9pm
Tickets Here (Includes 1 Free Drink, Hors d’Oeuvres, Drawing Supplies, Door Prizes). Space is limited!
19+ event

Join us for a super fun Drawing Disco as part of OCADU’s 150th anniversary celebration. It’s happening Tuesday, October 27, from 6–9pm.

OCAD U faculty member Erin Finley is a globally recognized artist and drawing expert who has been featured/interviewed by Yahoo News, CTV News, Global News, CTV’s The Social and Your Morning, Breakfast Television, CityTV, CBC The National, CBC Here and Now, CBC Commotion, CBC Radio, and CBC Arts.

And the ticket includes a lot: you’ll get a bag of free art supplies from Above Ground that’s worth more than the cost of admission, plus food, refreshments and drinks, and—of course—drawing from a live model. Absolutely no drawing experience is required. It’s designed to be fun and welcoming for complete beginners.

There are also two door prizes, each with $250 worth of Above Ground art supplies!

Erin’s Drawing Discos always sell out, so grab a ticket and come join us for a super fun night out!

Artists in performance: Natalie Waldburger (top left), Cybèle Young (top right), Sophie Dunkley (bottom left), and TooPink (bottom right). Images courtesy of the artists.

Drawing in 4 Parts

A series of performances and installations exploring drawing through paper, sculpture, material transformation, and durational processes.

Wednesday, October 28, 1:30–3:30pm
Free Admissions

Natalie Majaba Waldburger’s art practice engages the complexities of collaboration and institutional critique within anti-colonial research. At OCAD, Natalie teaches in Life Studies and is the current Associate Dean in the Faculty of Art. As a mixed-race Filipinx/Swiss artist, Natalie engages with diasporic narratives within the context of environmental responsiveness and bio-material practices.

Cybèle Young is a Canadian artist and author based in Toronto whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, kinetic installation, book arts, animation, film, performance, and participatory projects. Working with Japanese paper for more than thirty years, she creates poetic works that explore transformation, movement, ritual, play, and the animacy of handmade forms.
Instagram @cybeleyoung

Sophie Dunkley is a queer Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist pursuing a BFA in Integrated Media at OCAD University. Working across installation, performance, and soft sculpture, their practice explores agency, collaboration, and the interplay between body and technology. Dunkley’s work is currently featured in the national touring exhibition Textures of Canada.
Instagram @so00oph

TooPink is an interdisciplinary emerging artist based in Toronto. She works with many mediums including film, installation, drawing, paint-ing, performance art, and experimental photography. She is a student at OCADu in the Integrated Media program where she explores mark making and performance as methods to connect and collaborate with audiences.
Instagram @toopink.art

Artists in performance: Cathy Daley (top left), James Knott (top right), Pixel Heller (bottom left), and Francisco-Fernando Granados (bottom right). Images courtesy of the artists.

Drawing to a Close

Performance-based works exploring identity, memory, gesture, storytelling, and social exchange through expanded drawing practices.

Thursday, October 29, 5–8pm
Pay what you can

Honouring Cathy Daley: Performance by James Knott
“It’s a record of what took place. It feels more alive that way, with the evidence of process. I work at a drawing and then rework it.” —Quote from the National Gallery of Canada by Cathy Daley

James Knott is a Toronto-based artist, member of the 7a*11d Toronto Performance Art Collective, and graduate of OCAD University Their practice spans performance, music, and moving images to explore themes of queer and trans identity, and how archetypes of femininity and masculinity can interrogate the politics of desire.
Instagram @jamesnotjames

Pixel Heller is a multidisciplinary artist, international performer and the founder of Northern Jumbies Inc. based in Toronto, Canada.

Her work spans performance, photography, textiles, ceramics and painting. Influenced by her Afro-Caribbean heritage, her practice engages with themes of Black identity, cultural preservation and carnival masquerade.
Instagram @100mega_pixel

Francisco-Fernando Granados. Since 2005, his multidisciplinary practice has traced his movement from convention refugee to critical citizen, using abstraction performatively, site-specifically, and relationally, to create projects that challenge the stability of practices of recognition.

Drawing Out: Art Now is supported by:
◦ OCAD U Faculty of Art
◦ INTM: LIFE STUDIES SPECIALIZATION in the Faculty of Art through a generous donation of the Joan and Clifford Hatch Foundation
◦ Above Ground for Drawing Disco on October 27

OCAD University
The Great Hall
100 McCaul Street
Toronto, ON M5T 1W1

Follow OCAD U Faculty of Art on Instagram
Contact: artcommunications@ocadu.ca

Project Co-curators: James Olley and Amy Swartz