Meet John A Hancock! Workshop 10: Richness and Simplicity with Ink Pen and Brush

Even before studying art in college and grad school, John Hancock began “urban sketching,” regularly drawing among the brownstone buildings of downtown Wichita, Kansas. After college, he worked with an architectural historian and an archeologist to help them create a book chronicling the material culture of a once wealthy Southern town. For this book, John created drawings of whole buildings and specific details of the historic architecture. 

As an art and design professor, and now as an independent artist, John has continued his practice of

sketching in widely varied locations. His studio art has followed an arc from an early devotion to mid-western regionalism and Edward Hopper through the modernism of Cezanne, Kandinsky, and Gorky – yet in his sketching, John is an idiosyncratic classicist. 

In addition to helping administer his local Charlottesville chapter of USk, John attends sketch crawls, meet-ups, and throw-downs with other chapters in his region, and attended the Chicago International Symposium in 2017. For several years now, John has been writing a sketching blog (SketchingAlways.wordpress.com) and, late last year, also began to post his sketches on Instagram (hancock_john_a). As an independent curator, John is currently working with a regional art center on an exhibition of current urban sketching.

Meet Lisa Flahive! Workshop 11: Capturing Chicago’s Rhythm and Energy

Lisa Flahive is most widely known for her expressive drawings and watercolors of jazz musicians, created live, in the moment, on the bandstand. This type of work allows her to improvise, react, and communicate with the musicians. Lisa chooses watermedia because it reflects the life of the music and must be created boldly, in the moment.

Lisa has a B.F.A. in painting from Michigan State University but has recently become far more interested in drawing. For the last three winters, she has returned to school to study classical figure drawing at Studio Escalier in Paris. This has dramatically changed the direction and focus of her work. 

Lisa paints and draws what inspires her, such as cafes or chefs in the kitchen. She also loves to capture the energy of a city in her vibrant street scenes, and paints many en plein air, at night. Lisa is the artist in residence for Chateau Chantal Winery in Traverse City, MI and paints live on the bandstand every Thursday during their popular Jazz at Sunset summer series. This season her artwork will be featured on several wine labels as well as the cover for the 25th anniversary Jazz at Sunset CD (released December 2018).