Drawing Relations that Matter

This paper explores the nexus between my studio practice in lithography, my pedagogical approach, and the art-based research methods applied in an interdisciplinary team research project titled Piloting a Community Co-Learning Approach to Developing a School-Based Food Gardening Program. Informed by the work of Neimanis (2012) and her modalities of water, I am interested in the unknowability of water, viewing it as both a communicator and archive, and I add to this notion by considering water as a collaborator.
In the lithography process, water is vital—from grinding the stone to creating the image and printing. The interaction between water and tusche during drawing is unpredictable, sometimes leading the drawing (the unknowability) and at other times being directed by my tools (the collaborator). Similarly, in the garden project, water is essential from sowing seeds to nourishing plants and harvesting produce.
My research focuses on the relationships between children, water, and materials, using drawing as a medium for children to make their thinking about the world visible. By integrating a common worlds pedagogical approach, which emphasizes the inseparability of human and non-human relationships, with an artist's pedagogical lens, this paper seeks to explore the dialogues that water can initiate about our imagined futures—whether drier, wetter, or marked by extreme flux in scarcity and abundance. What lessons can water teach us?