Let's Draw

Can visual art be taught through radio? The producers of WHA’s “Let’s Draw” program thought so. Through pioneering on-air lessons, "Let's Draw" brought art education to schoolchildren throughout Wisconsin from 1936 to 1970. This exhibit combines a look at the historic "Let’s Draw" program with the work of six contemporary Wisconsin artists who have very diverse approaches to drawing: Emily Belknap (Cedarburg), Tony Conrad (Appleton), Nina Ghanbarzadeh (New Berlin), Lee Mothes (Kaukauna), Zach Mory (Milwaukee), and Katie Ries (Manitowoc). Their work ranges from tightly drawn realist landscape imagery (Mothes and Belknap) and loose "field note" sketches (Ries) to finely textured, large-scale abstraction (Conrad and Mory) and fluid images built up with calligraphic script (Ghanbarzadeh). 

Presented by the James Watrous Gallery in partnership with Wisconsin Public Radio, Let’s Draw includes archival photographs, transcripts, teachers’ guides, drawings, and an interactive station where visitors can listen and follow along with an original Let's Draw lesson. Several of the artists in the exhibition will script and record an audio art lesson of their own with the help of Wisconsin Public Radio producer Erika Janik. These lessons are available to hear in the gallery and below:

Let’s Draw is sponsored in part by Dane Arts, with additional funds from the the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation; The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times; the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation; and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation. The James Watrous Gallery also receives ongoing support from the Wisconsin Arts Board, with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts, and from donors and members of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.