Study Abroad Stories: a Drawing is a Song
When combined degree student Terry Cole (BFA + BA ‘25) was thinking about studying abroad, he wanted to prioritize a program that would help him develop the skills to be self-directed in a studio of his own. He ended up spending a year at Central Saint Martins, a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, in London, England. The UAL program had no classes and is structured more as a residency with deadlines for students to present their work to faculty. But Terry didn’t spend all his time alone in the studio. He quickly became close friends and artistic collaborators with Dutch Royal Academy of Art student, Lennart Heiner, who was also participating in the Central Saint Martins program.
Heiner and Cole made many drawings together over the course of the year. What exactly “together” looked like evolved organically. At times, the two artists sent individual works they had made back and forth over text. Other works were created working in tandem—in each other’s studios and cities. The works were created on paper and included ink, graphite, colored pencil, oil pastels, and acrylic paint. The subjects in the work varied, “cars, airplanes, prescription drugs, iPhones, the sun, fish, cats, the ocean, chickens, flags, evil people, holy people, churches, and houses,” according to Cole.
In May, Cole and Heiner (@len.heiner) opened a two-person show at The Grey Space in the Middle, an experimental art and music space in The Hague, Netherlands, titled a Drawing is a Song. The show featured a swath of nearly 100 of the works on paper that they had worked on together and individually during their year in the program. Cole and Heiner sat down with SMFA Communications Coordinator, Adrienne Sacks, over Zoom to discuss their study abroad experience, their work, their friendship, and their show.
What made you decide to participate in the University of the Arts program?
Terry Cole, School of Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts: I viewed it as a residency. I was thinking about how if I want to be an artist, I need to practice what it means to be in a studio. It was more about a pathway to working on only my art for a very significant amount of time. I have been here since September.
What has a day in the life been like for you while studying abroad?
Cole: I got here and thought that whatever community I was going to find, I would find at school, so I tried to get to the school and my studio every day. Some days were work heavy and some weren’t. At times, I didn’t know how to keep ideas going and not get really frustrated being in a studio. I’ve also spent a lot of time in London. I made friends working on collaborative projects at school. I helped with friends' films or films by friends of friends. It’s hard to think of “a day in the life” because London is such a massive dense place. It is an alienating and noisy place. Art is a good center to pick. It orients everything.
My life here hasn’t been just being in the studio. There have been lots of friendships that have led to projects, and lots of projects that have led to friendships. Whether it’s an exhibition, a poetry event, or a film, it’s nice to be on the margins of lots of people's projects and be able to contribute something.
More than being in a studio, I feel I have learned to be in a creative community. Other people have things figured out that I haven’t yet.
How did the collaboration between the two of you come about?
Lennert Heiner, Dutch Royal Academy of Art: We met very early on, and it took a while for our practices to sync up, or to find the parts that overlap. We would sit and make a drawing together. That was what we did for a few months. Increasingly, when we were together, we spent swaths of time, sitting side by side, working in our sketchbooks, or working on random pieces of paper. The show came out of that parallel practice. And a sort of dynamic that we created.
Cole: It helps to meet someone who has a certain similar attitude and can help create momentum towards productivity. There’s a feeling of when you make drawings, you are stuck with a book of feelings, a stack of drawings. I thought, let’s try and let our drawings do something, occupy some kind of space, and make somewhere for people to encounter us. There’s something meaningful about having a drawing situated in a place and time. As soon as you curate it in ways that aren’t chronologically ordered, you sort of create these sentences or little streaks that could have correlation or connotations together. This can create new narratives in things you didn’t intend when you mix your own work with someone else’s work and your own work with itself.
How did you go about getting a show staged abroad? How did you connect with the gallery?
Heiner: I had previously exhibited with the space and found them easy to work with and welcome. Terry had the idea to do a show, so I reached out to the space, we had some meetings, and started planning the opening.
Cole: It was nice to see random people come into the opening. Even if they just stayed for thirty seconds, it wasn’t like they were our friends and felt an obligation. It was nice to see people give it what they thought it deserved and move on. It was meaningful when they had something to say.
You have written that you are influenced by Paul Klee, Karel Appel and the CoBrA movement. What about these artists influences or inspires you?
Cole: In Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook, he shares his idea that drawing or making images or photographs is always some sort of proposal about how energy works and about the flow between elements that are working together. He reduces the creation of images to something physical, akin to how gravity works, how things fall and roll, and how friction and weight work. Shapes and lines can all do this on the page or on the canvas. That speaks a lot to me. Professor Mara Metcalf at SMFA introduced me to the idea that a drawing is a statement or a metaphor about how energy works. The thing that made me interested in drawing a few years ago was its proximity to handwriting. I pay attention to the way people write, like the way people walk, or their body language. I keep letters that my mom sent me because just looking at her handwriting reminds me of how much I love her.
You wrote that, “the works reflect a sense of bringing solidity into the way art is made in a post-digital culture.” Say more about that.
Cole: I want to make things that lift people out of the low experience that algorithms thrust us into. I choose to draw to respond to that situation. At one point, Len made a drawing of his cat that died. When he sent it to me, I immediately had, even from this digital replica, this sense of love, connection, and honesty. Art that I experience that tries to confront the aesthetics or conditions of social media is trying to do too much. What if I just offered something that brought us back home or brought us back to simple experiences of love and attachment and warmth that preceded loops of viral videos or unwrapping tech products?
What advice would you give to other SMFA students about studying abroad?
Cole: I saw a lot of people come here and they sort of stuck to people they already knew. There can be a feeling at a new school or new place that you are being cast off as a temporary visitor. I took on an attitude that I go to school here. I tried not to tell people I was on exchange and tried to become a part of the community. I didn’t want to confine myself to other Tufts people. The best advice I have is to approach it like you are a student at a different place and start over socially. That is what led to me meeting Len. In the end, students from two art schools from two different countries got to work together. I got to open my sketchbook and start drawing in a studio in another country. We are from completely different sides of the world, and it was cool that connections can lead to new places. It can reach a lot further than the city that you decide to go to.
Images courtesy of Terry Cole and Lennart Heiner
