Shorttakes by Riva Harrison in the Winnipeg Sun
review of the exhibition "Draw Stranger"

Drawings done with laxatives, tomato soup and boiled-down art books, as well as sketches of the ingredients needed to make letter bombs, computer viruses and LSD are among the 150 pictures on display at Winnipeg’s Plug In Gallery.”I’ve been talking to artists about what they consider to be drawing and they all have a different idea of what that initial gesture might be and where it might go,” says Wayne Baerwaldt, curator of the oft-controversial gallery. “It (the exhibit) is very diverse.” Those words might be the understatement of the year. Baerwaldt admits that Draw, Stranger contains little of what the average Joe might label a drawing. Featuring the works of nine artists, the show’s gems include story boards by Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin and a series of richly detailed pencil drawings by Berlin’s Marc Brandenburg. More unusual are the sketches of local artist Les Newman, who works while stoned and has drawings that reflect his state of mind. “Newman is also fond of using odd drawing materials – like gunpowder, laxatives and vodka. Then there’s New York’s Greg Green, whose drawings include a shopping list of material for making a letter bomb, sketches of parts of the bomb, as well as a model of the explosive device. His works also include formulas for LSD and computer viruses. “Great ideas sometimes start on the back of an envelope or a napkin at a restaurant. We try to show the three-dimensional form…. what (the drawings) become,” explains Baerwaldt, who isn’t anticipating any backlash over the exhibit. “Not at all. You can get all that information off the Internet,” he says, referring to the bomb-making material. “It’s just simply making all of these subjects, objects and ideas available for contemplation as a form of drawing.”