Capturing ‘small stories’ from the lake: At the MAA/Ground Residency

Drawing has long been established as a conversational tool, as notation passed between individuals or with larger groups to create an evidence trail of ideas. There is a fascinating sociality to the activity, finding parallels with the dynamics of a conversation, as artists enter similar cycles of inspection, re-conception and re-examination, pushing ideas forward, asserting focus and altering original intentions. The MAA/Ground Residency offered the opportunity to examine this sociality on a more nuanced level, by applying approaches commonly used in the practice of oral history, to devise a model of drawing that can sensitize participants to the nature of human interaction and explore the ‘smaller stories’ contained in the details of shared experiences. The following report maps the first stages of this study from initial interaction with the site of the residency at Niemelä house, E. Finland, and onto a series of drawing conversations with its attendees. The results start to show how, as a particular field of the visual arts, the drawing process can be shaped by situated ‘small talk’, reflected in equivalent hesitancies and utterances in emerging and growing ideas, and in turn, how narrative analysis can be used to interpret and explore the sociality of drawing taking place.