The Drawer #24

The Drawer is the first publication dedicated entirely to drawing.

A bi-annual, open-ended thematic review, The Drawer celebrates the practice of drawing in its broadest possible context, combining contributions from artists, graphic designers, architects, and illustrators with work from a surprising array of musicians, writers, choreographers and filmmakers. What do each of them share? Well, the thing of drawing, of course! And their unique place in its universe.

The Drawer is all drawings, all kinds of drawers, an intriguing proposition... For each issue, our editors choose a theme based on its potential for creativity or fantasy and inspired by literature, cinema, music or any other engaging aspect of the culture. Contributors are then invited to submit drawings related to the theme.

The Drawer is an open playground for expression and creativity in print
What is drawing? Who draws? What for, and why? With each issue, we cast a wide net, and ask as much about the state of drawing today as possible through the work of our extraordinary and ever-changing community of contributors.

Visual, portable, manual, The Drawer is meant to delight and inspire. In-print exhibition, miniature art cabinet, The Drawer's modest ambition is to discover and share the endless possibilities of drawing.

The Drawer is brought to you by editor Barbara Soyer, and artist/illustrator/art director Sophie Toulouse.

The Drawer #24 – Under 25

For its 24th volume, The Drawer brings together a selection of drawings by some thirty final-year students from French and international art schools.

What's the status of drawing in art schools today? What does it look like? How do students draw? With what tools? What aspirations? What world(s) do they draw? The Drawer vol.24 attempted to answer these questions by bringing together the work of around 30 students in their last of year of art school in France and abroad. The Drawer has had the occasion to develop relationships with some art schools since its founding in 2011, most often through a network of teaching artists. 

Embracing its empirical character, this volume does not aim to be exhaustive. The schools that are absent here, whether because they weren't contacted, didn't respond to our call, or because their students weren't accepted, may appear in a future issue. The goal is to establish an annual and anticipated rendezvous, dedicated to the most contemporary drawing practices and its graduating practitioners. This issue is a glimpse, a fragmentary capture.

Each of the students presented was selected by The Drawer based on their portfolio, for the richness and vitality of their drawing. They were assigned a place in the magazine, which varied according to the nature of the artwork and the publication's intended rhythm.

The pleasure of discovering the work presented, its quality, was the first lesson and the first surprise. Drawing is doing just fine and these young artists have little to envy of their elders.

Second lesson: the digital revolution doesn't seem to have touched every art school. The use and place of new technologies in contemporary graphic practices are surprisingly limited, only present in a small number of the portfolios we received. Pencil has thick skin.
Third lesson: the predominance of the intimate and the collective in the published drawings and the discourse that their creators produce about them.

Largely autobiographical, the drawings of the young artists appear as efforts to create bonds between themselves and the world, giving their personal history a collective and curative significance, warding off the misfortunes and violence of the era. 
The result is solid, sensitive, funny, touching. Drawing as a space of healing, distancing, and transformation of the world for the young generation.