DrawNow! Online! with Denise Maroney on Huguette Caland

Join us for the first installment of our two-part series of online drawing workshops led by teaching artist Denise Maroney. Inspired by our current exhibition Huguette Caland: Tête-à-Tête, the workshops will explore weaving and embroidery as they emerge within Caland’s caftan designs and paintings. Maroney will draw from her own diasporic experience living in Japan, Lebanon, and the USA, as well as her textile practice, to present a series of creative prompts and experimentations that utilize paper, thread, cloth, and ink. Following Caland’s process of working sections while being unaware of the visual whole, participants’ drawings will likewise be put together to create a collective piece.

This program was recorded via zoom on August 5, 2021.

Huguette Caland

Huguette Caland was the only daughter of the first president of the Republic of Lebanon, Bechara el Khoury. She began painting at the age of 16 under the private tutelage of Fernando Manetti, an Italian artist who resided in Lebanon. At the age of 20, she married Paul Caland, the nephew of the publisher of a pro-French daily Le Jour.

By 1964, she had lost both her parents, and shortly after her father’s death, Caland created her seminal painting, Red Sun. Later that year, she enrolled in the fine arts program at the American University of Beirut where she studied painting and drawing. In 1970, she moved to Paris and it was there that she began to explore themes of sexuality and desire in her work. This includes her series Bribes de Corps or “body bits,” in which isolated and interlocking body parts resemble landscapes. In 1979, she was commissioned by the fashion house of Pierre Cardin to create a line of high-fashion caftans. In 1987, Caland settled in Venice, California, where she built the home and studio of her dreams. The artist lived between there and Beirut until her recent death at the age of 88 in September 2019.
Denise Maroney

Irish-Lebanese-American by birth, and raised between New York City and Japan, Denise Maroney’s eclectic cultural background reflects her diverse professional experience. Maroney received her BFA in Theatre from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and worked between New York City and Beirut in theatre production and costume design for ten years, before formally shifting into the field of textiles.

Maroney completed her MFA in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design, supplementing her studies with embroidery courses at Atelier Lesage (France) and the Textile Research Centre (Holland). Professionally, Maroney designs embroidery for Bokja Design Studio (Beirut, Lebanon) and managed color & textile production at the Mitchell Denburg Collection (Antigua, Guatemala). She is an instructor at the SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology (NYC), Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (Lebanon) and the Textile Arts Center (NYC). Her specialized areas of research and design include embroidery and weaving from the Middle East and Central America, and her textile work has been exhibited at galleries in Providence, Beirut, and in New York City.

Credits

Free online programs are made possible by the Cy Twombly Foundation.The Drawing Center's Education and Community Programs are made possible by the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc. Major support is provided by The Evelyn Toll Family Foundation. Additional support is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.