Oh! A hand !

It’s not the pencil that draws, it is your hand. 

Whether drawing lines or inscribing words, the act of making marks lures ideas into the physical world. Hands perceive and reveal things that our eyes and conscious minds may never know. We discover things about ourselves and our thoughts by engaging the hand in a mark-making process. 

San Francisco artist Agelio Batle‘s Drawing Hand is both a poetic metaphor and a functioning drawing tool; all of its surfaces can write. Committed to making art from materials that are part of daily experience, the artist originated this work by casting his own hand (Drawing Hand No.1) in pencil lead, graphite, each day for the calendar year 1999. Wishing to share the insights gleaned from that sculptural process with a wider public, he similarly cast a child’s hand (Drawing Hand No.2) to create the object before you. 

Drawing Hand suggests that our own hands have the innate capacity to be creative instruments. An object full of innocence, desire, pleasure and human potential, it invites you to access your imagination and discover its infinite possibilities.