Artist Lecture Review 1: Maria Calandra

       The artist Maria Calandra gave a talk at Cuddleworks. She uses a combination of social media and formal technique to create her drawing. The artwork and studios of her contemporaries is her drawings’ subject. Pencil in the Studio includes drawing, writing, and photograph. She visits artist and has a conversation with them in their studios. She takes photo and draws the life of artists. She said that her visits become an intimate look inside the artist’s space, both physically and psychologically. Her drawings are a study of detail that from the rag that slips under the corner of a painter’s table to the hidden collaged element found on the multi-layered surface of a canvas.
       Maria Calandra showed the work of EJ Hauser studio. She described the details of the artist’s studio and felt excited to draw. She agreed with the artist’s opinion that you have to keep close your childhood interests when you sit in the studio. The artist used text to tell Maria Calandra through her various paintings. She also presented the Christine Hiendle’s studio. She explored the process of the work with Christine; put forward some questions and approaches. The artist gave her an explanation about the painting makes her feel like the walls are closing to her. She had the same feeling after drawing in the studio. Maria Calandra usually spends some time to talk with artists, shared their experiences, and talk about some new methods about the painting. She believed that Christine and her painting as her inspiration after for many years. The studio has significant influence to her and helps her to produce some unique style drawings. She is good at observing, talking, and drawing, make her work naturally distinctive.