Dragan

2/11/2018

Yanio Alfonso – Dragan

INTERVIEW

YANIO ALFONSO Interview by Nathalie Alfonso Translation by Caroline Peña Bray

September 23, 2016

Yanio Alfonso was born in Bogota, Colombia, where he studied Building Construction Technology at the Universidad Javeriana de Colombia. He has been living in South Florida since 2001, and has been working https://draganproject.org/interview/yanio-alfonso/

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in pool construction since 2002.

Nathalie Alfonso: Do you draw every day?

Yanio Alfonso: It’s not necessarily with a pencil that I trace a line, but I draw a lot mentally. On route to work, in my work itself, thinking about how I’m going to install something. Mentally, I’m always drawing things.

NA: How would you describe your practice?

YA: I work in construction, and currently work in the construction of swimming pools.

But my educational foundation, from a very young age, was the construction of buildings and recreational facilities.

NA: What did you study?

YA: In Colombia I trained to be a Civil Engineer, which can be similar to the career that I currently have here in Florida called “Building Construction Technology.” When I was training in Colombia everything was drawn in pencil, using a ruler and a T-square, while here we work with AutoCAD. At the time, around 1986, I knew that AutoCAD existed and always thought that it would be utopian to be able to draw in AutoCAD. I once tried to use the program at home on my computer, but the simple fact of working with https://draganproject.org/interview/yanio-alfonso/

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a computer frustrated me due to differences in the technology and a lack of knowledge of the program. AutoCAD is a program to be used in the office and I work, more than anything, in the field. That is where I employ my drawing practices.

NA: When you arrive at work to build something, a structure, would you say that your first tool is drawing?

YA: Absolutely. You have to locate yourself in a physical space to know where to start. Any type of construction comprises a plot that contains numerous imaginary lines embodied in a drawing. I have to stand in the drawing and then mentally project the figure I see onto paper.

NA: How do you see the act of rubbing something against a surface in order to describe an object? You say that rubbing can convey the texture of the brick.

YA: By placing paper onto a surface with a particular feature and rubbing that surface with a pencil, you transport that surface to yourself. You can take the surface with you. In the house we feel each surface and we touch it.

I can do the same surface from just looking, but I’ll only see—I’m not going to feel.

NA: What makes the action of drawing different from only imagining yourself in a space? Why is this action of drawing, tracing a line, more important for understanding your location within a space?

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YA: Drawing is how I locate myself. For example, when you arrived to Florida you didn’t know which way was north, south, east, west. So we looked at a map, and we located ourselves. For me, without drawing, I’m nowhere.

NA: I remember once that you told me a story about the first time you came face to face with an architectural plan in the middle of a workday. You were still very young and without a high-school education, in the middle of work, when you first approached these drawings. Could you tell me about this? https://draganproject.org/interview/yanio-alfonso/

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YA: When I had access to plans for the first time I think I was seventeen, but I had already spent three years working in construction, so I already knew a lot. What I did then was try to understand, in a sort of vice versa way, what is it that architects and engineers do? Today the boys go to university and learn about both plans and construction. When I went to university I already knew about the manual side of things, but not about plans. Yet it was very easy for me to understand, because they were flat planes that practically described what I did every day, and I began to find the navigation charts of my profession, even though I had already set sail.

NA: You’ve told me about a time you visited a museum to see the drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci when you were at university—what was it about these drawings that seemed so powerful? Is there one drawing in particular that has never left your memory?

YA: Most of those drawings I still see as if I were in front of them right now. What impacted me about those drawings is that it was the first time I saw the proportions of the body as a circle. You see a human figure with open hands and feet, and a circle drawn around him. As human beings we have the ability to be a complete circle, completely closed. But the other thing that struck me about da Vinci’s drawings was his ability to draw to scale without scale. He was one of the few geniuses able to draw a perfect circle without using a compass.

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NA: What are the first ideas that come to mind when you hear the word drawing?

YA: Straight lines, sharp pencils, T-squares and set squares. Mmm, the words econometric, axonometric… Points of view come to my mind. My task, when it comes to projects that I do not understand, is to convert it first into a drawing so that I can understand it, and then interpret what the plan means.

NA: Speaking of tools, what importance does the pencil have at the moment of designing a structure? The reason why I ask this is because I remember, from when I was very little, one of my first lessons and a very important thing was learning to sharpen a pencil with a knife, making sure that the point was very long and very sharp.

YA: Yes! That’s a basic principle of drawing.

When we are children and we write in a notebook we don’t tend to rotate the pencil to generate different types of marks or letters.

The first thing to know is that the tip of the pen will start thinning, and the letter will then return to being thick and ugly, and charcoal will begin to stain the sheet. However, density is an important lesson later on, when we start to refine our abilities. For example, you use a number two pencil, which is a conventional pencil, but then use a very thin, hard, HB4, and an HB1, which is a thick pencil. These pencils give expression to the drawing without using another material, only the combination of the different densities of the pencils.

NA: I have a theory, and I’m not sure how true it may be, but talking about this experience of learning to handle the pencil https://draganproject.org/interview/yanio-alfonso/

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and especially learning how to move the pencil to make sharper lines on the paper, I believe that in the meticulousness of drawing it is possible to come to know the meticulousness of the final product. For example, when I am going to work with a person and I see how they treat the paper and the pencil, for me they will treat that construction in the same way.

YA: I would not call it a theory; I think it is a truth. I once visited an exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci in the Colsubsidio theater in BogotĂĄ.

My task involved taking a tour of the museum and then summarizing the work. Upon seeing the line work of the artist, I struggled thereafter to treat not only my drawn lines very carefully, but also the papers and surfaces upon which I made them. As a constructor, the end result of my work should be seen as a clean sheet of paper with perfectly drawn pencil lines.

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NA: Do you believe that drawing allows you to communicate better than with words?

YA: Yes! One hundred percent. Beginning with the fact that English is not my first language and I have many shortcomings when it comes to communicating what should be done in a construction, so the easiest way for me to communicate is to always have a pencil and paper to hand. Not only does drawing help me understand what is happening in space, but also it provides me with a way to https://draganproject.org/interview/yanio-alfonso/

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communicate clearly with others. So I consider drawing to be a third language.

NA: Speaking of a third language, can you explain a little about the technological transition from the use of freehand drawing to using AutoCAD? YA: My experience with AutoCAD has been fabulous! Not only have I been able to finally learn to use the program, but I also began to understand drawing in other dimensions.

When my oldest daughter was studying architecture she drew using this program, which has led traditional draughtsman to extinction. In fact today, an artist who handles AutoCAD perfectly will find work, no matter whether he knows how to draw freehand.

NA: And drawings don’t allow that?

YA: The difference is that a drawing cannot be put into motion in order to view diagrams from different angles as AutoCAD does. For example, in the program, just as in freehand drawing, I must create a foundation for the structure and give it perspective. But with freehand drawing, if I wanted to see the plans from different positions, I would have to do the same job again and again, while AutoCAD allows me to see the plans in any angle by rotating the image 360 degrees.

NA: This has basically transformed drawing into a three-dimensional object.

YA: In addition, it allows us to preserve every detail of the drawing without having to repeat it again and again, which I think is great—the different degrees of manipulation of a structure seen on the computer screen.

NA: With all the technological developments that we have in relation to drawing, programs https://draganproject.org/interview/yanio-alfonso/

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like AutoCAD or photography, do you consider it important that we preserve the practice of freehand drawing?

YA: I don’t have an exact answer, but you and I can still use these elements because they have always been a part of us. Unlike younger generations, which perhaps eventually may not need them, they simply aren’t part of everyday life anymore. Children cannot miss something they’ve never had.

NA: But don’t you think that drawing and the physicality of the action are essential in learning to interpret the world?

YA: It is important for us to know this element, and I even think it is important in the growth of human beings. Child psychology is based in drawing: a child is asked to make marks on paper to express what he wants, and if he is made to do the drawing on a computer then perhaps the experience will not be the same. I do not think the innate need that we have to make marks with our body is so easily lost.

NA: Is there a drawing exercise that you consider important that we all should learn?

YA: Yes! Making horizontal lines with a steady hand on paper is a good exercise that everyone should practice.

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NA: I remember being 3 or 4 years old, and having to do these straight-line exercises. Why was this important to you?

YA: It’s good training for the mind. If you concentrate, you can draw one straight line, but it becomes challenging to keep at it. How can you achieve perfection? If you can train yourself to focus your mind and your hand on something as simple as drawing a straight line, then you can manage the everyday actions in your daily life with more ease, whether it’s cooking, cleaning or building something. When you train to be constant and https://draganproject.org/interview/yanio-alfonso/

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disciplined with something, there is no real end goal. It’s a way of doing things right.

Striving for perfection is a constant, but you never really get there. There is always room for improvement. It reflects the kind of person I am, not just in my job but in my daily life too.

NA: Like in your parenting. I remember how important it seemed to you. You taught me technical skills with the tools, like how to turn the pencil while drawing a line, and this somehow created a level of responsibility and discipline with the materials I use today in my work. I was so influenced by this constant struggle of learning to draw an outer space or inner space, how to reach perfection. It makes sense to me that I’ve carried the training in making perfectly straight lines into my artwork. Were you aware of the influence that drawing would have on my life?

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YA: No, I was never aware of that. At the time, when I was teaching you, I was also working hard with a pencil, and it seemed to me very fun what I had been learning. While I was learning I also wanted to share, and what better way to do this than with my children, who gave me their full attention. I knew it was a very good practice. To teach a child to draw, especially geometry allows children to develop many parts of the brain that lead to the perfection of which I have always spoken. Was I aware that you would be an artist? Not really. I was just passing on a tool I had used in my own life, one that had given me a way to live. I think this tool has helped you to follow through—and to walk your own path.

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