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USK GUAM
USK CELEBRATES OUR 300TH REGIONAL CHAPTER:
Guam
FRANCIS MARQUEZ REFLECTS ON GUAM BEING THE 300TH USK CHAPTER, AND ‘URBAN’ SKETCHING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
BY TALOFOFO RIVER BY OLIVE NEWMAN
Wow 300th chapter! Guam is a small island. There are artists, however, and most choose to be private and create their own subgroups. A lot of them are mostly into mural painting and conceptual drawing versus real life on-location drawing. Even now, urban sketching is still unheard of here. Some have an idea of what it is, but still probably have questions about on-location drawing, which is why we made it a mission to spread the word and tried to establish the group. We are comprised of three admins: myself, Olive Newman and Ehrian Marquez. On average on a regular meetup we get about 10 active “members,” and on a really good meetup about 20 people.
At first we weren’t sure people would come, so we reached out to other art groups, then eventually some schools and teachers took notice and reached out to us. We even captured the tourism bureau’s attention, and we hosted
a sketch session to mostly non-sketcher influencers from abroad. This is how we began to solidify in a sense. To this day, we collaborate in any creative way possible to have our sketch meetups attract more sketchers. We also use this as a way to give back to the community, by opening the floodgates to people who are interested in art but have no way of joining other established art groups. One thing we always get asked is “are you an art teacher?” or “is there an art class?” People here expect some kind of instruction, and from time to time, we do a basic Urban Sketching 101 class.
Guam is a young chapter and we hope to grow this scene in the future. We’ve done several sketch sessions in
Guam’s capital Hagatna, mainly at Plaza De España, due to its convenience and a lot of subjects in that area. For an island, there are some areas with prominent buildings, such as Tumon, where the concentration of almost all hotels are in, and this is as “urban” as you can get here in Micronesia or this part of the Pacific. There is a lot of green and blue in Guam’s sketches because we are surrounded by sea and jungle.
TOP LEFT: INAJARAN POOLS BY OLIVE NEWMAN LEFT: GOVERNOR’S COMPLEX BY YEON SOOK PARK
“L IFE HERE IS SLOW-PACED, THEY CALL IT “ISLAND TIME.”
SKETCH BY FRANCIS MARQUEZ
ABOVE: GUAM MUSEUM BY EHRIAN MARQUEZ
TUMON BAY BY FRANCIS MARQUEZ
26 DRAWING ATTENTION CONNECT WITH USK GUAM
CONNECT WITH FRANCIS
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