The Plans for Pipe Whistle drawing series consist of nine ink, acrylic, and gouache drawings on graph paper that foreground drawing as a site of experimentation and function as working studies that articulate Hlady’s process of translating abstract ideas of sound into sculptural form. In her exhibition text, “How to Draw Sound,” written for Hlady’s solo exhibition at The Power Plant (Toronto) and The Gallery at University of Toronto Scarborough in 2001, Nancy Campbell reflects on the role of drawing in the development of her sound-based sculptures: “In the case of the working drawings that precede her […] sculptural sound work, She Moves Through the Fair, Hlady starts with the not-so-simple idea of sound. She draws a set of speakers emerging from a surface, seen in her first rendition as a blue square, perhaps suggestive of water. The procession develops with a second drawing of microphones emerging from plasticine. Here she decides that rather than deal with the fickleness of water, she will explore an insulator with her trademark plasticine. Hlady moves on to complete a large series of drawings, each permutation of its predecessor, to become the foundation for the sound sculpture. The drawings digress at points, exploring tangents that may or may not be realized in the final work. Throughout the series we see tubes or conductors twist and bend, extend and shorten, emit one “arrow” of sound or a cacophony of silent noice. Once her ideas have coalesced, however, the drawing stops and the sculptural work begins. This is not to imply that these drawings are merely preliminary or unrefined. They are in fact lovely little signatures, a sore on the making of sound presented in a linear fashion, allowing the viewer access to Hlady’s working processes.”
Exhibition history: 2008 Art Gallery of Windsor (Canada); 2007 Museum London (Canada); 2004, Verge Art Gallery (Vancouver, Canada), 2003 Art Gallery of Calgary (Canada); 2003 Durham Art Gallery (Canada); 2001 Tracey Lawrence Gallery (Vancouver, Canada), 2001 The Gallery (University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada), 2001 64 Steps Art Gallery (Canada)
Publication: Campbell, Nancy. “How to Draw Sound.” Marla Hlady, The Power Plant, 2001.
