A note from Yasamin Safarzadeh, Program and Curatorial Director at Kimball Jenkins:
I want to take a moment to share my continued support and excitement for this YYA writing Inkubator facilitated by the efforts of Manchester InkLink. This partnership is lifting up the voices of our community’s youth and young adult population no matter what their background. These educational opportunities are integral in hearing the voices which are so important and so often overlooked in the state. Please continue to tune in and look for us on socials for more articles! LinkedIn here. Instagram here.
By James Jennings
A giant sycamore stands tall over the courtyard of the Kimball Jenkins where I am attending a life drawing class. At the end of the drive sits the classroom, an old carriage house converted into an art salon. I join about fifteen other people inside where we grab snacks and finger curiously an array of art supplies laid out on tables.
As participants filter in and mingle, our instructor Yasamin (Yaz) bebops around the room coaxing us into position around large easels facing a chaise lounge where I presume the model will sit. I find a spot with a good view of the model area and chat with a lawyer who talks of quilting and her hopes of reigniting past drawing skills.
Yaz makes a final round to make sure everyone is set up while giving an overview of the class. Admittedly, I am apprehensive about how comfortable I will be working with a nude model, but Yaz’s playful energy eases my fears. She introduces the model and we casually transition into a lesson of drawing contours of the model. I am immediately swept up into the tradition of drawing a human figure posing just for us. Yaz moves us from contour drawing to gesture drawings, into more extended studies.
At first I work in a habitual flurry carried over from attempts to sketch people on the move through their day, but as we move to longer studies I relax and revel in the time we have to soak in the details of human form.
From charcoal and pastels, to inks and paints, the variety of media available inspires experimentation, and I feel like quite the artist as I rip large papers from my easel and tape on the next. Our model’s ability to hold poses for extended times is impressive, and gives me further confidence to shift between general form and focused detail so that by the class’s end I have a satisfying pile of quick studies topped with a few “complete” works to take home for further study.
In the weeks after class, the forms and lines of the model find their way into new work. I am grateful for this fresh inspiration in a practice that was perhaps growing stagnant in established routines.
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Kimball Jenkins is celebrating 40 years of creating strong relationships within our local community through art, history, and culture. We do this through a lens of centering under-represented voices and removing barriers to traditionally marginalized communities. Our success is built on creating a wide circle, and collaborating with other organizations for shared impact. We are proud to serve as an important cultural and economic hub for artists and events within the region.
Kimball Jenkins also has a satellite gallery right in the heart of the Greater Manchester Chamber building. KJ is an arts and cultural center which exists in a unique and amorphous space celebrating multitudinous partners, artists and advocates who actively and historically invest their innovations and resources into the health and cultural exceptionalism of New Hampshire. The Greater Manchester Chamber has partnered with Kimball Jenkins to curate a satellite gallery featuring a myriad of diverse artists, as a step in ensuring a more inclusive and desirable future for New Hampshire. You’ll continue to see rotating art installations in the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Boardroom at the Greater Manchester Chamber, located at 54 Hanover Street, Manchester, over the course of the next year.
About the Ink Link Inkubator
This Inkubator program is aimed at nurturing and growing New Hampshire’s local journalism ecosystem – support for educators, opportunities for students and creating pathways for future journalists. And beyond that, we want to engage our community in this process because together, we rise. The program is administered by Local Media Foundation, tax ID #36‐4427750, a Section 501(c)(3) charitable trust affiliated with Local Media Association. Make a tax-deductible contribution here.
