By linking one apparently unconnected image with one another, Dustin Wheat beguiles judges by playing with format and scale, the future and the past to reach first place, Practitioner, in Eye Line drawing competition
Dustin Wheat
Lecturer in architecture, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
‘I believe sketching is a reflection of how we internalise our world,’ explains our 2023 Practitioner winner Dustin Wheat. And with what skill he gives us a glimpse into his. The collage of pages from his Moleskine sketchbook, which revolved around his thinking for the design of a house for an astronomer, were as captivating in their detail as they seemed broad in their scope. Wherefore the octopus, from whose tentacles the rest of the drawings seem to emanate? And the yellow overlay (butter paper?) that creates formal connectivities over the conceptual ones. And it seems even Wheat was not sure where it the process would lead: ‘Each page had to consider how it was going to stitch together both vertically and horizontally, keeping me in the dark until completed.’
All the judges were beguiled by the result. ‘His sketch process seems to prototype a real world being created by idiosyncratically working through an idea – all done consummately,’ said Jes Fernie. ‘It’s amazing in linking one apparently unconnected image with one another,’ added Rana Begum. Hamza Shaikh added that while Wheat submitted three drawings, each displaying a proficiency that only arises from ease with the medium, ‘the sketch book montage evidences a serious level of skill; he’s a talented draughtsman; I even love the Post-It notes that run through.’
Wheat’s sketch of Le Corbusier’s Saint-Pierre, Firminy, chapel, impossibly supported on a fantastic mesh of strange timber, intimates a later hallucinogenic communion between him and Charles-Édouard outside Amsterdam, ‘…together, laying in a field of tulips’. A travel sketch of OMA/REX’s Wyly Theatre in Dallas meanwhile, was a skilful pencil render completed in-situ over many hours, in which he realised the importance of ‘bringing a goddamn chair.’ The personal nature of his interpretations charmed judges with their introspection, humour and humanity.
And while Alan Power was keen to note the hand-drawn sketchbook’s ‘singular nature’ compared to other entries, Begum was as drawn to his work’s potential to be randomised ‘in seeing what would happen if pages were mixed in a different way to generate a new arrangement’. Sublimating both ideas with themes arising from this year’s judging process, the work Fernie, observed: ‘appeals to me in the same way that we talk about AI’s hybridity; he’s using the old technologies of paper, pen and pencil but he’s similarly playing with format and scale, the future and past.’
Eye Line award winning drawings from this and previous years