Drunken Paw in Nakusp • 2011

Drunken Paw presents: Egg Drop Soup in Nakusp, BC, August 20 and 21, 2011

It starts with the Navigator (a rental) waiting for the ferry so the drunken paw (dp) can cross the Upper Arrow Lake. Five days later, dp are on the ferry again, this crossing the Lake to head back to Calgary. In between there was lots of drawing, good meals, drinking, installing the exhibition in MOE, drinking, a tour of Wendy's land, Friday dinner on the deck at Rod Bremner and Debra Rushfeldt's land (next to Wendy's land some 5 km outside Nakusp). Then, on Saturday, the collaborative drawing began and pretty much continued until late Sunday evening. It was GREAT to have drunken paw in Nakusp...

MUSIC: Up in Her Room by the Seeds, a live version. I thought this was appropriate as we did listen to Up in Her Room and one of the works dp produced is entitled Her Room, which is, I believe, a reference to the song. And it is one of my favourite tunes especially the long version. The full length version, all 14:44 of it, is available on my YouTube video: CHUCK STAKE SOME ARTWORKS.

Debra Rushfeldt Studio (DRS) and the Museum of Ephemera (MOE) presented the Calgary based collaborative drawing trio drunken paw at two locations in Nakusp, BC on August 20 and 21, 2011. The Nakusp sessions were entitled egg drop soup. The trio is comprised of the artists: Mark Dicey, Leslie Sweder and Janet Turner who engage in public collaborative drawing sessions as drunken paw. Each session becomes a drawing "jam", an open, improvisational and experimental mark-making process which produces a number of finished drawings during each session.

drunken paw (dp) collaborated at DRS, 206 Broadway Street, on Saturday, August 20 from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. That drawing session was part of the Saturday Art Tour which included seven other artist studios and galleries located throughout Nakusp.

On Sunday, August 21 drunken paw shifted their activities to MOE, 312 - 3rd Avenue NW, where they collaborated on a new series of drawings. They worked outdoors that day, initially on the deck beside MOE (shifting regularly to avoid the sun) but eventually moving to the lawn in front of MOE to keep in the shade.
In addition to the drawing sessions there was a small exhibition of dp previously completed framed and unframed drawings on display at MOE on the Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 to 4:00 PM.

Nakusp artist Chuck Stake collaborated with dp during the Saturday session and Nakusp artist Debra Rushfeldt collaborated during the Sunday Session. The drawing sessions continued after the public presentations at Wendy Toogood and Don Mabie's house in Nakusp. The drawing sessions each lasted some 20 hours in length, spread over two days --- a total of nine drawings were produced.

During a dp drawing session each artist starts a drawing which is then rotated between the participating artists with each artist responding to what the others have previously expressed, a creative dialogue is initiated and egos are set aside to allow for trust and open collaboration to ensue. The drawings continue to pass from artist to artist as the momentum of the session builds. The process continues until the group reaches a creative consensus that a particular drawing is complete. The scale of the collaborative works varies tremendously, from very small drawings to very large, almost mural size, works.

The trio have shared a number of sessions in their homes but their preference is to work in public and have held sessions in bars, bakeries, galleries and other spaces where people gather socially. dp have been working together since 2009 and have had a number of public collaborations and exhibitions in Calgary and Canmore. This summer they presented weekly drawing sessions at the Sidewalk Citizen Bakery in Calgary, as well they are participating in a group exhibition at Jarvis Hall Fine Art in Calgary. They are represented in numerous public and private collections throughout North America.

Images of drunken paw collaborating, as well as examples of their finished drawings, are available at Art Review: http://www.artreview.com/profile/drunkenpaw

Drunken Paw received funding for this project from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.