Bike drawing compulsory in school's admission cycle

09:04 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 27, 2005

BY BRYAN ROURKE
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Students come from all over the country to attend Rhode Island School of Design. And they all come by way of bike.

Slide show

Journal photo / Sandor Bodo

One of the 405 bicycle drawings by freshman on display at RISD.

Slide show: View some of the drawings

It's a requirement.

All RISD candidates must submit a graphite drawing of a bicycle as part of their application, in addition to sending their high school grades, their SAT scores and a personal art portfolio.

"Sometimes the requirements change," said Edward Newhall, RISD's director of admissions. "But as far back as anyone knows, there has always been a bicycle."

"Each year the admissions committee talks over what would be best to draw out the students, no pun intended," Newhall said. "The bike perennially shines through. It is pretty challenging."

Drawing a bike is a little less arduous, and a little more artistic, than riding one.

"We at RISD consider drawing one of the most fundamental tools artists will use," Newhall said.

Hannah Wood, a RISD sophomore, abided by RISD's bicycle requirement when she applied two years ago. She's glad this year's freshmen were treated no differently.

"It's like a hazing," she said. "RISD gives annoying assignments. If you don't like it, too bad. Make the best of it."

Sophie Bryant, a freshman from Seattle, had no idea about RISD's bike requirement until she applied.

"The application process is a lot different at RISD," said Bryant. "Most places just want you to submit slides of your work. It was cool they gave us a little assignment."

"I thought, 'Well, that's interesting,' " Bryant said. "Why would they want me to draw a bike?"

"Generations of people have done it at RISD," said Joann Stryker, dean of RISD's Foundation Studies, which oversees the freshman class. "It's RISD's trademark in the application process."

This year, for the second consecutive year, RISD is exhibiting the bike drawings of its freshman class. That's 405 variations on a bike theme.

RISD's homage to bikes is on exhibit in the foyer of its Waterman (Street) Building, between Main and Benefit streets. All the drawings were done with graphite on white paper, 16 by 20 inches. Beyond that, students could do as they pleased.

Some of this year's freshmen drew bikes abstractly, others realistically. Some drew close-ups of parts of bikes. Others used vegetables and fruits for the component parts..

And some students didn't actually draw a bike. Rather, they presented the mere suggestion of one. In one drawing, you see a man's arms positioned as though holding handlebars. In another, you see a mime posing as if sitting on a bike.

"We didn't give very specific instructions," Newhall said. "We want that responsibility to be in the applicant's hands. We want them to convey their sense of the bicycle."

RISD applicants have varied personal portfolios. The bike assignment, Newhall said, creates a common point of comparison among them.

"We can get a sense, to the fullest extent we can, of a student's artistic decision-making," Newhall said.

THE BIKE DRAWING isn't the be-all and end-all in gaining admittance to RISD. Rather, Newhall said, it's just "a piece of a larger puzzle."

However, the piece has been around a long time. Officially it has existed since 1991. But unofficially, Newhall said, it probably goes back to the 1950s. He knows he was asked to draw a bike when he applied to RISD in 1970.

"If you lived near campus, you had to come on a particular Saturday and do the drawing in person," Newhall said. "You had three subjects you could draw. The bike was one."

Back then, students who lived far away from RISD had to make arrangements to draw a bike in the presence of their high school art teacher, according to Newhall.

"It was a way to make sure the drawing was physically done by the student and was not the product of the student using a surrogate," Newhall said. "That's my assumption." (The requirement that the bike drawing be supervised has since been dropped.)

Not only does a bike drawing provide a common denominator among applicants and an indicator of their artistic inclinations, according to Newhall, it also presents an implicit challenge.

"If you draw the bike from the front or back, you'd have a challenging perspective issue," Newhall said. "If you draw it from the side, that challenge disappears."

Other common objects -- a shoe, a ball, etc. -- aren't nearly as complicated to draw as a bike, Newhall said. And they don't force artists to choose between a simple or difficult perspective.

"You see the range that's possible," Newhall said. "It allows us to determine, as best we can without knowing the students, how they might do here and how they would approach things."

Journal photo / Sandor Bodo

Katherine Verdickt, from Bedford, N.Y., holds her drawing of a bicycle at RISD's display of 405 freshman drawings, in the foyer of RISD's Waterman Building.

"There are reviewers who are sticklers," Newhall said. "But the general mood of the committee is we're going to allow some flexibility."

Call it creative license. RISD admissions people call it a relief.

"It makes our job interesting," Newhall said. "We see a lot of bicycles."

Katherine Verdickt, a freshman from Bedford, N.Y., knew about RISD's bike requirement years before she applied.

"I stressed out over it," she said. "I thought, 'What would I do to be different and unique and stand out?' "

Verdickt's answer was two bikes.

"It's one bike checking out another bike," she said.

One of Verdickt's bikes is viewed from the front, showing her skill with perspective. The other is viewed from the side. The front wheels of the bikes turn toward each other like the long necks of two swans.

"I was after not just how the bikes look, but how they interact," Verdickt said. "I wanted the bikes to have personality, and show love or lust, or some sort of relationship."

However, the sort of relationship Verdickt's grandfather saw in her drawing surprised her, indicating something she never intended: lesbian love.

"He said they're both girl bikes," Verdickt said.

Bryant, the Seattle freshman, did not get on a bike as part of her process of coming to Rhode Island. She made her mother do that -- naked.

"For some reason it just popped in my head," Bryant said. "I thought it would be fun to have a figure."

Her drawing shows just the occupied seat of a bike. Bryant presents a portion of her mother's figure.

"She said she'd do anything for my education," Bryant said.

Bryan Rourke can be contacted at brourke [at] projo.com and at (401) 277-7267.