Drawing Borders

• In Event: Visual Inquiries Into Borders and Perimeters of Learning

Abstract

In this presentation, I share ongoing research on drawing as a tool of thought in relation to the twin concepts of borders and perimeters. We invent borders and perimeters in order to draw distinctions between here and over there. They are drawn to divide actual space, but the twin concepts are also frequently used to describe distinctions and categories across disparate domains. As such, these concepts demonstrate how our most abstract and universal ideas are still rooted in the physical experience of how we move through the world and leave our mark in the spaces in which we find ourselves (Lakoff & Johnson, 2008).

Young children draw lines and enclosures early and often, as they begin to notice and control the physical traces of their movements with crayon or marker or stick in the sand (Lowenfeld, 1957; Burton, 2005). The activity of drawing marks and lines across surfaces gives otherwise fleeting thoughts and perceptions, both abstract and concrete, material presence. Drawn lines and enclosures are signs we use to impose borders and perimeters upon our experience of the world.

Drawn lines exist as both physical traces of action and as abstract metaphors for a host of phenomena both real and imagined. Lines and shapes can transform in the mind of the maker and viewer, standing in for a world of things: me, you, my dog, your house, the sun... as soon as the line crosses the surface, the border between the real and imagined is itself crossed. Drawing externalizes and records what might otherwise be transitory thoughts or perceptions.

A line drawn in the sand between me and you denotes mine and yours. But lines, as any experienced drawer will tell you, do not exist “out there.” They are projected onto the world by our minds, boundaries which are always negotiable, lost and found in the process of looking and marking and looking again. Countless lives have been lost on battlefields on account of lines drawn in haste and fixed without due consideration to all concerned.

Expert drawers often keep their initial lines indefinite and permeable, keeping them open to unforeseen possibilities (Fish & Scrivener, 1990). Novices tend to quickly fixate on the outlines of simple shapes, missing out on nuances and ambiguities. Experts “see into their sketches,” transforming and reconfiguring ideas and perceptions on paper in the process, using their drawings as tools for thought. (Suwa et al., 2001).

Author

• Andrea Kantrowitz, SUNY - College at New Paltz