| Sue Ferguson Gussow is a figurative painter who works in a wide range of drawing and painting media. A graduate of the Cooper Union, Columbia, and Tulane University, Gussow has served on the faculties of both the School of Art and the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union and taught and lectured at several universities and art institutions, among them Yale, Columbia, Bennington, New York University, Maryland Art Institute, Parsons School of Design and the Frick Collection. While enrolled in Gussow’s freehand drawing class during the 2007 fall semester in the Cooper Union School of Architecture, I was the only student from the Cooper Union School of Art. | 
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Tomashi Jackson
Courtesy of the artist.Sue Ferguson Gussow is a figurative painter who works in a wide range of drawing and painting media. A graduate of the Cooper Union, Columbia, and Tulane University, Gussow has served on the faculties of both the School of Art and the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union and taught and lectured at several universities and art institutions, among them Yale, Columbia, Bennington, New York University, Maryland Art Institute, Parsons School of Design and the Frick Collection.
While enrolled in Gussow’s freehand drawing class during the 2007 fall semester in the Cooper Union School of Architecture, I was the only student from the Cooper Union School of Art. There was one exchange student from the Cooper Union School of Engineering enrolled in the class. We met every Friday morning with critiques stretching well into the afternoon. We students explored our own themes and developed visual narratives while looking to the drawings of Gorky, Rembrandt, and Seurat. Our chosen subject matter ranged from the figure, self-portraiture, landscape, to rooftop wires and piles of garbage.
The final critique was a marathon held in Cooper Union’s Houghton Gallery beginning at 9 a.m. and ending around 8:30 p.m. on the last day of school, December 23. It was awesome! There were visual representations utilizing line, space, function, abstraction, metaphor, and subtlety. Complex, insightful drawings from floor to ceiling! Gussow invited professional architects and alumni as guest critics who joined us throughout the day, afternoon, and evening. The class was only offered during the fall semester, and was the only freehand class available to Cooper Union architecture students. When the work came down that night it was assumed that it would not be viewed again as a collection until May’s End of the Year Show.
In late February five days became available at a new space for the exhibition of experimental architecture in Brooklyn. I felt as though it could be a great opportunity to hang the freehand drawings outside of our institution for the first time. The exhibition was entitled Drawing Atmosphere: Freehand Drawings by students of the Cooper Union Schools of Architecture and Art. At that time the 5th-year architecture students were up to their necks in work as they prepared for important reviews, while 4th-year architecture students were chained to their studio desks preparing for a mid-week design competition. Luckily 15 students agreed to participate and contribute to the body of work. The space was prepared and the drawings hung with the generous assistance of the Cooper Union painting and drawing Office, and six members of the class.
On the evening of March 1, the drawings of Tim Evans, Danny Garwood, Wahid Seraj, Keyleigh Kern, Kayt Brumder, Deborah Ferrer, Jessica Bayuk, Uri Wegman, Arnold Wu, John Greenberg, Iman Johnson, Christian Kotzamanis, Karl Lindgren, Ido Nassani, and me were exhibited the public at SuperFront in Brooklyn. The turnout was just right due to the fact that all of the drawings were hung using clips and twine. The owner of the space, Mitch McEwen, asked that “pinning up” on the walls be considered a last resort. SuperFront, as an exhibition space, is intended to encourage curators and participants to rethink space and its occupation, therefore all pieces, other than the large drawings of Danny Garwood, inhabited the space by way of ceiling pipe work and construction stakes in the exposed brick face. We danced amongst the work until midnight.
Inside of the same space on the afternoon of March 2, an intimate symposium took place. Gussow of the Cooper Union, Donald Gerard, New York City Associate Urban Designer and adjunct assistant professor Mitch McEwen of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, students, and friends gathered for an in-depth discussion about the work and process that lead to its growth. The talk went on for an hour and was filmed and edited by Noelle Raffaele. It probably should’ve been called “short and sweet” because that’s what it was.
