Thank you @thenecessarian for your resonant review in @hyperallergic . Your writing brings clarity and depth to the ideas I’ve been working through—reading it was a real gift.
"What drawing can be: four responses" brings into conversation four distinct practices that stretch the language of drawing—across material, scale, and sensibility. I’m honored to have been in that conversation alongside Teresita Fernández, Tony Lewis, and Constantin Lüser, and grateful to Edouard Kopp, Kelly Montana and everyone at the @menilcollection for their support.
A letter
made of letters shaped in pewter foil, pressed into a net.
“I could write to you all night long.”
A line written from a wife to her husband aboard the French ship, the Galatee, in 1758.
A drawing in / on / through a floating cotton grid.
Letter (detail), 2025 Cotton, chain, pewter, ostrich feathers, brass, and steel 150 x 36 x 32 inches
📷 Paul Hester/ The Menil Collection
From the letters discovered by Professor Renaud Morieux in the Kew National Archives, UK.
Thrilled to be part of
Object of Magic
@pazdabutler
November 15, 2025 - 10 January 2026
opens this Saturday, 11-1 ✨🪄✨
waters, bodies (detail)
2025
transfer pigments and graphite on paper
70 x 48 inches
Jillian Conrad
Tony Feher
Vernon Fisher
Shana Hoehn
Matt Kleberg
Roy Lichtenstein
Matt Magee
Kate Shepherd
Nestor Topchy
Robert Wilson
“waters, bodies” (2025) is an installation of 28 drawings and the culmination of my project Watermark, which explores the ways that the less-visible, like hydrological systems beneath our feet, become more-visible as places where water continually marks and remakes the landscape. Funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. @houstonartsalliance
Thanks to @la.brasca
for her evocative and sensorially-rich review. ⚡️ “What Drawing Can Be: Four Responses” – A Response
JC-centric excerpts here…but the full review @glasstire offers a deeper dive into the show’s diverse approaches to drawing, featuring Teresita Fernández, Tony Lewis and Constantin Lüser.
Detailsss…
Just 9 days left to see “What drawing can be : four responses” @menilcollection . Curated by Edouard Kopp (Chief Curator) and Kelly Montana (Associate Curator) at the Menil Drawing Institute.
It’s been such a fun ride with @teresita.fernandez , @_tony_lewis_ and @studio_constantinluser 🌈
📷 Frank Xavier
@𝔫𝔢𝔴𝔪𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔥𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔰
is a project to mark time.
🏹🌑🏹
Shells, like drawings, are accumulations. They’re built in layers, shaped by pressure, patterned by forces that are hard to see.
The tides shape shells. The moon shapes the tides. And new moons—those dark thresholds—have always felt like a good time to start something.
So I’m drawing one shell for each of the remaining new moons of 2025, from June through December. Seven months, seven newmoonshells.
Next year? Thirteen new moons.
July’s 𝔫𝔢𝔴𝔪𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔥𝔢𝔩𝔩 is known as the
Buck Moon
occurs on 24 July 2025
lasts for 29 days 8 hours 40 minutes
graphite and colored pencil on/in/with an oyster shell
Limited edition —> DM for details
find them here —> @newmoonshells
A clip from my artist talk “Things Becoming Other Things” @menilcollection
Check it out—🔗 in bio.
Part of the group exhibition “What drawing can be: four responses”, along with Teresita Fernandez, Tony Lewis and Constantin Lüser. March 20 - August 10, 2025.
Fork
is a drawing made with sticks.
A found rose branch and the tip of a pine tree branch cast in brass lean on the wall.
A drawing made through perception:
from one vantage point Fork appears to be a single, continuous line, and from another it reveals itself to be two.
Part of “What drawing can be: four responses” @menilcollection
Fork, 2025 rose branch, brass
28 x 16 x 5 inches
📷 Frank Xavier
Corse
is a 3d frottage drawing in lead, of course.
A thing like a riverbed or a waterway.
A drawing made by pressing the wiggly lines of tree bark into soft sheets of lead.
A corse is “a dead body”, “a living body” and “the main part of anything” —which pretty much covers the whole shebang.
Corse, 2025 Lead sheet, wood, graphite, and embossing powder 7 1/2 x 67 1/2 x 27 inches
📷 Frank Xavier
Join the Menil this Thursday, May 15, from 7–8 p.m., for an Artist Talk with Jillian Conrad.
The Houston-based artist’s view of drawing is tightly bound with ideas about language and thresholds, exploring the moment and way in which one thing might unexpectedly morph into another.
See her works in “What drawing can be: four responses” and learn more at menil.org/whatdrawingcanbe.
🎥 Jay Clark Films
#Menil #MenilCollection #MenilDrawingInstitute
A shell is a
Receiver
The inside of the oyster shell holds a hairline miniature landscape drawing with a pearly reflective pool at its center. Shaped like a human ear, this hollow place receives your gaze and offers back the sound of your thoughts.
Receiver (2025)
oyster shell, graphite, colored pencil 3 ½” x 4 1/8” x 1 ½ “
@menilcollection
📷 Paul Hester/ The Menil Collection
📸 Jillian Conrad
