24 Hour Drawing Project on U Street

On Friday night, The Heights Life stopped by the Hamiltonian Gallery (14th and U) to check out the 24 Hour Drawing Project. (Click here for the local NBC coverage of it.) The 14th St. corridor is dotted with small galleries and on almost any weekend, one of these places has something going on.

At this event, six artists spent 24 hours in the Hamiltonian space creating new works of art. We showed up 12 hours in - they all seemed alert and apparently had no Red Bull on hand!

There was one woman building a house, several artists working around a table, and someone else manipulating blue dust on the floor (these descriptions are wholly inadequate and I will caveat that I am not an artist, an art critique, or remotely educated about art).

Leah White, my favorite of the participating artists, was using shadows of gallery visitors to create cut-outs which she displayed throughout the space. At first, I walked in and saw people hard at work, but I didn't see much in the way of results. But then I realized that Leah's work had truly permeated the space. Her shadows - done on black contact paper, I think - were embedded in the other artists' work, lining the floor, and slowly taking over the room. For a casual observer, her project was easy to grasp and appreciate.

The Hamiltonian Gallery's current exhibit remained on display during the 24 hour project. If you are a bibliophile, I hope you checked it out. The artists on display had manipulated books, words and language in a striking way. For more on that exhibit, click here. It was scheduled to end today.