Tam O'Shanter Drawing Session: Botany

For this Tam O’Shanter Drawing Session, Carin Kuoni, Director of Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, NYC, will introduce the Swiss author Robert Walser (1878-1956), a butler, waiter, and wanderer, whose focus on the minutiae of life produced some of the most startling literary prose of the 20th century. We will read a couple of Walser’s shortest texts on nature and vegetation, and then enjoy a presentation by Frick Fine Arts Library Head Kate Joranson of stunning botanical drawings in the library holdings. Participants are asked to bring the stem or branchlet of one beautiful, ordinary plant of which they will render their own botanical drawing.

Please note: This event takes place at and is produced in collaboration with Frick Fine Arts Library, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh.

Tam O’Shanter Drawing Sessions

These creative sessions are for those who draw and for those who don’t. Explore contemporary art through improvised forms of drawing with artists and organizers of the 2018 Carnegie International. Sketching, doodling, cartooning, mapping, writing, and marking are among the many modes that will bring us together.

Named after the original art classes for young people that Carnegie Museum of Art has been holding since 1929; the tam o’shanter, or tam, is a Scottish beret—oft adorned by a pompom.