Draw With Me™ | James Sheehan

ADRIENNE LEBAN
visual artist • writer • teacher • publisher

I was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1945, though my family moved to Miami Beach, Florida long before I uttered my first words, and there I spent my first 22 years. After graduating college with a B. A. in English and Art History, I came to New York City and attended the School of Visual Arts for a year which profoundly changed my life. It not only helped me find my path (thanks largely to my teacher and friend, Barbara Nessim), but there I discovered my love of helping others to discover their own unique creative energy.

2004, with her painting “12 Spirals,” 1974, oil + metallic powders

I have offered my Originality course at SVA for the past 30+ years to such wonderful students as Patrick McDonnell, creator of the syndicated cartoon characters in “Mutts®”; Alexis Rockman, acclaimed painter; and Genevieve Gorder of tv’s “Trading Places,” to name just a tiny sample of the thousands of wonderful students who have taken my courses, many of whom have become influential artists themselves—and good friends.

I worked as a graphic designer/art director/copywriter as soon as my year of study at SVA ended, won industry awards immediately, and found that advertising is a language not limited to selling useless products. In 1971, I put my realization into the form of a pioneering course called Advertising and Graphic Design for Social Change. Work from that course has been used by non-profit organizations, and in 2004, the Library of Congress requested a collection of the sociopolitical posters done under my creative direction for its permanent poster collection.

I’ve applied my skills as a communicator to social change outside the classroom by leading the successful effort to make artists’ lofts legal for living with the passage of a new state law (known as the NY State Loft Law of 1982). More recently, I started a website prior to the 2004 election called www.VotersWorld.org to enable the creative use of ads and graphic design to encourage political participation.

I’ve exhibited my personal work (painting, drawing, posters) in many venues, mostly non-commercial, such as libraries, government buildings, and alternative galleries and museums. In 1988, I earned a Master‘s degree in social theory at New York University for my thesis that a society of creatively active individuals— a society of artists—is not only possible, but essential.

My first book, Inner Energy, was published by Autumn Press many years before I started to publish kindred artists’ work under my own imprint, The Lifework Studio, Inc. When I asked Dona Yim and James Sheehan, former students of my Originality courses, to take on the design of the first two Creativity Tools™, Create with Me™ and Draw with Me™, my purpose was to bring the practice of my lived and tested philosophy—that individuals can free themselves from conditioned assumptions and preconceived ideas regarding art, and escape the standardization that obstructs their originality and the joy of creativity—to as wide an audience as possible. As the editor of the Heartland Press observed, these books are “creativity ticklers,” or as I call them, ice-breakers to help you tap your own well of creative energy.