The True Likeness exhibition opened in Davidson’s Van Every/Smith Galleries in October 2020. The exhibition is a portrait collection: an assortment of faces, an immersive visual diary of existing as a human being in all its complexities — a page written by each artist. It is raw and personal and expresses feelings of connection across differences. True Likeness paints a portrait of the intricate root system that forms the United States, one made up of individuals with their own stories, experiences, and history.
True Likeness embodies the emotions shaped by our recent isolation.Its works carry a sense of questioning identity, self-discovery, crippling loneliness, and connecting with both the intimate, innermost parts of yourself and the communities to which you belong. In particular, artist Bill Thelen exemplifies this, exploring themes of identity, queerness, COVID, and politics in their work, maximum joy, which they created amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Maximum joy is an installation in True Likeness, composed of watercolor on paper, ceramics, a t-shirt, oil on canvas, various books, and fireworks, all of which come together to create an abstracted, imaginative self-portrait. They created some of the included drawings in Drawing Room’s Zoom Drawing Club: a virtual gathering, which meets every Saturday over Zoom, for people to soothe their loneliness, openly talk to each other, and most importantly, make art.
On February 6th, Thelen hosted a Zoom drawing club for the Davidson College community. There were about twenty five participants on the Zoom call, most of whom I had never met before. However, it did not feel uncomfortable or foreign; it was just people, coming together to enjoy each other’s company. It was casual and conversational, and there was an emphasis on ‘no pressure:’ no pressure to have your camera on, to speak, or to show your creation to others — but if you did show your drawing it would be met with excited compliments. The welcoming atmosphere was strengthened by the title drawer, applied not just to Thelen but to everyone, regardless of their ‘level.’ Instead, if you enjoy drawing, you are a drawer, simple as that. Thelen would refer to “us drawers,” a phrase which carried with it a sense of community, sans need for fancy pencils or sketchbooks or degrees.
Read the full article in The Davidsonian.
-Isabel Smith ’24