Christine Hiebert: charcoal, 2009

Christine Hiebert. Untitled (rd.09.1), 2009. ink, charcoal, graphite on paper. ca. 18" x 23.5" from New Work by Robert Harms, Christine Hiebert and Jane Wilson. The Drawing Room, Easthampton, NY. February 6 - April 11, 2009

There are Christine Hiebert's blue tape drawings, lovely masking tape lines on large walls, and there are her charcoal drawings.  Her website shows drawings that are transparent and layered: the clarity and high-contrast of tape on painted drywall translated to charcoal mark-making.  One of the addictive tendencies of charcoal is its smudging – a clear mark made by a stick is then made ambiguous by the hand, but Hiebert uses an array of charcoal, ink and pencil lines precisely as they hit the page, each of which outline a space on the page that intersects and overlaps other line-drawn spaces.  

The wide bands, the width of a char-kole stick, or a graphite stick (each giving a different density of particles on paper) reveal both their own qualities plus the qualities of the paper.  They are laid down by a hand on an arm that follows its own rules. 

Christine Hiebert. Untitled (rd.09.3), 2009. ink, charcoal, graphite on paper. ca. 18" x 23.5" from New Work by Robert Harms, Christine Hiebert and Jane Wilson. The Drawing Room, Easthampton, NY. February 6 - April 11, 2009