Meditation – Penn State Arts & Design Research Incubator

by William Doan
ADRI Director, professor of theatre, 2019-20 Penn State Laureate

When I started The Anxiety Project almost five years ago, it was never my intention to exhibit the drawings in any other way than as part of a performance. In my mind, I wasn’t so much making art, as using drawing to try and express what I seemed to fail to express to others with words alone. (I know that sounds a lot like making art… But for reasons those living with anxiety and depression will understand, the idea of making art is too intimidating to have as an intent). I was coming to grips with the fact that I’ve lived with anxiety and depression most of my life and have, more often than not, let them take the lead in how I moved through the world. Anxiety and depression were essentially in the driver’s seat and I was just along for the ride. The drawings help. Drawing every day helps. Drawing as a regular part of my meditation practice helps. I even integrated drawing into my therapy, often sharing them with my therapist and discovering how much meaning they contained for me.

photo by Ashleigh Longtine

As I started to develop performances and presentations around the drawings, they became integral parts of my story and I loved projecting them as big as possible, depending on the venue. They were/are my scenery, sometimes even my props. So when people talked about the drawings and how the drawings affected them, or how they wanted more time with them than the performance allowed, I was always a little surprised. I didn’t have much confidence in them as stand-alone drawings, or as drawings one might go to experience in an exhibition.

But here we are. Two exhibitions of work from my Anxiety Project happening in 2021:

HUB-Robeson Center, University Park
HUB Gallery & Online
The Anxiety Project
January 16-March 14

Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County
Paulette Lorraine Berner Community Gallery (Second Floor)
Selections from The Anxiety Project
January 31 – February 28
Friday, Saturday, & Sunday 12-4:30

Both exhibitions include drawings from the project’s performances, as well as pages from the most recent part of the project, a visual narrative, Inside Anxiety and Depression – very much a work in progress. The HUB Gallery exhibition will also include our short animated film, Inhale, Exhale, Draw.

Drawings by Bill Doan Hanging on the walls of HUB Gallery
photo by Ashleigh Longtine

The work in the project is very personal. But it also seeks to make meaning out of the fact that anxiety and depression are pervasive in the archives of human experience. And it seems this is true for biochemical and social reasons. I’m eager to experience the drawings in this context, despite how risky it feels to have them stand on their own outside performance. I hope others will discover something in them that speaks to them and helps shed some light on their own experience or that of someone they love.

The HUB Gallery online exhibition is currently open for viewing.

View a 360° photo of The Anxiety Project Exhibition at HUB-Robeson Galleries.

I’ve been drawing as a form of meditation for quite some time. Actually, I’ve been drawing most of my life. But it was in the last couple of years that I became intentional about drawing as a tool for helping to manage my anxiety and depression. Like a number of art practices, drawing can have a calming and positive effect on the mind and body. There’s a significant body of research to support this claim. For some time, the most well known research centered on music’s ability to positively effect the brain, the breath, and one’s mental state. Now studies on dance, movement, drawing, creative writing, and other artistic practices show similar results. The arts are good for us. And though artists have known this forever, it regularly bears repeating in a world that tends to think more about the relationship between medicine and health than the relationship between art and health.

Quarantining during the Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced this idea in countless ways. It seems that each day begins with a series of questions that primarily produce anxiety – What am I going to do today? What should I do today? Will doing that make any difference? How do I face another zoom session? How can I help? Can I get 10,000 steps in by just walking around my house? What will I do if this is it? On and on and on and on …. until I have myself worked up and convinced that I simply can’t find a way to fit into this new world. I mean, it took decades for me to figure out how to fit into the old world! (All this happens between waking up, showering, and making the first cup of coffee). And then I head to my little home studio. And I draw. I sit, breathe, choose from among my various tools – pencils, pens, brushes, pastel sticks, watercolor crayons, and draw. Maybe it’s a “selfie” drawing, a farmscape, the idea for a comic, a new piece for the Anxiety Project, a leaf, a bird, a tree, or just a series of marks on the paper that are a record of the impulses moving through my hand. And I do this for at least 15 to 20 minutes.

And I’m better afterwards. Some days better than others. My heart rate is slower, my mind is calmer, I can remember to be grateful. Drawing brings me into the present, it draws me out of the trap of regretting the past or worrying too much about the future. Drawing is medicine for my mind and soul.

Category: Meditation

A Tale of Two Exhibits …

photo by Ashleigh Longtine

Draw It Out