ABSTRACT
Deborah Berke has been drawing her entire life. Berke attended New York City public schools, a girls boarding school, and the Rhode Island School of Design to study architecture. She graduated in the middle of a recession, found her first job as a graphic designer for an engineering firm, then opened up her practice and paired it with teaching to support herself. Today she still teaches, and encourages her students to draw. Drawing is a tool for thinking, she says, and one that requires discipline and a schedule. From initial sketches she then moves to abstract drawings with thick, black wax sticks, developing plans, sections and elevations all at once. The New York firm that bears her name best known for its 21C Museum Hotels in Louisville, Cincinnati, and Bentonville, but when Deborah Berke starts to talk about drawing, it's the new music conservatory at Bard College that's top-of-mind.
