The Albright-Knox’s latest special exhibition, Drawing: The Beginning of Everything, celebrates contemporary artists’ diverse approaches to the medium. Here on the blog, we’re taking a closer look at several artists featured in the exhibition.

Using lead, which is extraordinarily hard and can easily shred paper, Kelly Wallace draws in a cadence of vertical strokes, beginning at the top left corner of the paper and methodically working up and down in the form of a sine wave. The almost sculptural results of this process draw us into a world of renewal and decay. The artist believes that the experience of creating and looking at art should be slow, methodical, and restrained. Wallace’s dedication to his craft is evident in works such as Medium Rare—a hauntingly beautiful, precisely constructed image.