Anastasia Aukeman, Assistant Professor of Art at Parsons the New School for Design, teaches a foundation year seminar that “brings together reading, writing and [art] making in a manner that is essential to the creative work of artists and designers in every discipline.”

A long-time DART subscriber, she contacted artist Lynn Pauley after seeing her Q&A last spring. The result of their conversation was a class led by Lynn as guest artist yesterday, with myself along as guest documentarian.

In a state-of-the-art seminar room in Parson’s new University Center, on Fifth Avenue, Lynn set the groundwork for an afternoon of drawing on location. She showed the students her sketchbooks, which amount to a history of her practice as a visual journalist, covering events as diverse as the Oklahoma City bombings and the Arkansas Derby, on assignment for The New Yorker and the New York Times Metro Section, among others.

Her directive for the afternoon was to “see, smell, hear, and feel the city;” to listen in on conversations of passersby; to engage the senses in an eight-minute automatic writing practice, in which the hand never leaves the paper; and to make a 20-minute drawing at our stop on the High Line. These precise instructions, practiced on a regular basis, she said, create a solid foundation for the artist as a storyteller. Work by Lynn, a graduate of School of Visual Art’s MFA program, The Illustrator as Visual Journalist [now Illustration as Visual Essay], is included the SVA exhibition that opened this week, We Tell Stories—a tribute to the program, now in its 30^th year, and to it’s founder and chair, Marshall Arisman. Information.

The intensity of the session that followed as we walked across 16^th Street and drew at the park was electric. Have a look:

Anastasia Aukeman, left, and Lynn Pauley, right. Photos above: Peggy Roalf. Photos below: Anastasia Aukeman.

Lynn Pauley earned her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, BFA from Syracuse University, and an Art Education degree from the Parsons School of Design. She has taught innovative, cross-disciplinary on-site illustration classes both here and abroad since 1989. From 2006 to 2008 Pauley was Chair of the Illustration program at New Hampshire Institute of Art. She has been an instructor at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, F.I.T. and the School of Visual Arts, NYC. A frequent lecturer and instructor in illustration and on the subjects of, work ethic, craft and personal voice, Pauley recently finished her stint as the Visiting Artist at PrattMWP in Utica, New York. More.

CORRECTION to yesterday's DART Board On November 6-9 E/AB Editions/Artists’ Books Fair takes place at the Art Beam Building located at 540 West 21st St (between 10th & 11th Avenues), NY, NY, NOT at the location listed, which is the E/AB office. Information.