Melissa AJ Dysart wants to help kids and adults alike hone their critical thinking through doodling. Dysart is an architectural project coordinator at Level 5 Design Group in Springdale. She’s also an artist.
“It’s practical and interactive,” she says of both her art and the community spotlight event she will participate in at the Amazeum in Bentonville on Feb. 8. “It’s also to give another aspect of if you have an artistic personality, why not go into architecture? Or even, I spent many years in engineering.
“I tried to channel my creative energies into the drawings I did. That was my viewpoint of kind of mundane construction documents — I tried to make them visually pleasing so they’re easier to read and to build.”
Dysart will lead an interactive experience at the Amazeum where guests will learn more about different drafting technologies through a visual environment, make drawings themselves and use KEVA planks to build structures based on drawings and documents.
An exhibit of Dysart’s work will also be on display — both drafting works and watercolor paintings and collages that implement her other doodles and even construction documents.
“We’re getting into everything is three-dimensional and virtual,” Dysart shares. “So, I want to give a hands-on [idea] for how things used to be and how really beautiful the drawings were whenever they were hand-sketched and what goes into that — that they were kind of a tradesman-type piece of art.
“There’s been a big disconnect between the ability to even draw some simple two-line drawings and 3D. And the problem is, is that in order to create all these beautiful three-dimensional and virtual images, you have to have basic concepts that lie in a two-dimensional realm and be able to understand that. And I’ve noticed a trend in the industry that people are having more difficulties just even understanding basic construction documents, and the staff at the Amazeum kind of backed that up because they were seeing the same thing. That’s when they invited me to be a community spotlight.”
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JOCELYN MURPHY
jmurphy@nwadg.com
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FAQ
‘Pencil to Pixels’
WHEN — 2-4 p.m. Feb. 8
WHERE — Scott Family Amazeum in Bentonville
COST — $9.50; free for members and kids under 2
INFO — 696-9280, amazeum.org
