Artist and ACT Technical Instructor for Fabrications Graham Yeager joined artist Elisa Hamilton on April 7 at Olin College for a community art project called “Drawn Together at Olin.”
Originally created for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2018, Drawn Together, from which “Drawn Together at Olin” emerged, was a way for people to intentionally connect to one another across barriers.
Above images: Elisa H. Hamilton and Graham Yeager, Drawn Together at Olin, 2025. Photos courtesy of the artists.
In the project, partners stand on separate sides of a window, place their markers tip to tip on each side of the glass, and then create a single drawing together. While making the drawing, partners must trust their unspoken connection to decide together how the drawing will begin, where it will go, and how it will end. The project consisted of an expansive collaborative glass drawing that was created on-site by the artists, as well as a one-day interactive program in which museum visitors were invited to make their own collaborative drawings on glass. Partners could make a free form drawing or choose from a set of drawing prompts. Some of the objects drawn here include boba, glasses, spaghetti and scissors.
Above images: Elisa H. Hamilton and Graham Yeager, Drawn Together at Olin, 2025. Photos courtesy of the artists.
In the Drawn Together method, partners stand on separate sides of a glass panel and select a random prompt selection from a bucket of rich prompts developed by the artists. After both partners have seen the prompt, the pair must create a single drawing together with markers tip to tip on separate sides of the glass. While creating the drawing, partners may not speak and must trust their tip to tip connection with their partner without knowing where the drawing will begin, or how it will end.
Hamilton was previously at MIT in 2017 as an invited artist for Arts on the Radar.
Above images: Elisa H. Hamilton and Graham Yeager, Drawn Together at Olin, 2025. Photos courtesy of the artists.
About the artists:
Elisa H. Hamilton is a socially engaged multimedia artist who creates artworks and community-centered projects that emphasize shared spaces and the hopeful examination of our everyday places, objects, and experiences. She holds a BFA in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MA in Civic Media from Emerson College.
Hamilton is a 2023 Brother Thomas Fellow, and she has been recognized by WBUR as one of 25 Artists of Color Transforming The Cultural Landscape. Her work has been shown locally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions. She has been the recipient of numerous commissions and grants to create artworks, community projects, and participatory programs. These works include “Jukebox,” a permanent art installation and archive of community narratives, commissioned by the City of Cambridge; “Can you see me?” a participatory art project at ICA Boston’s Art Lab; and “Sound Lab,” an interactive installation commissioned by The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and showcasing the sounds and voices of Boston-area community organizations. Her work is in the collections of Fidelity Investments, Bank of America and CitizenM Hotels.
Hamilton has created projects for institutions including Boston Center for the Arts, The Currier Museum of Art, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Tyler School of Art, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, The MGH Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds, For Freedoms and Now+There (now The Boston Public Art Triennial).
A proud alumna and a dedicated member of the MassArt community, Hamilton served on the MassArt Board of Trustees from 2013-2023 (as Chair from 2021-2023). In 2024, MassArt recognized Hamilton with an honorary doctorate, and she served as the commencement speaker for the class of 2024.
In addition to her work as an artist, Hamilton is an educator who has served in multiple roles at institutions in the Greater Boston academic community. She is currently Visiting Community Artist at Olin College of Engineering.
Graham Yeager is a Boston, MA based artist whose practice uses sculpture, performance, drawing and printmaking to create excuses to talk with people. His participatory projects that champion tactile and vocal interactions have received many awards including the Blanche E. Colman Award, Timothy F. Nichols Drawing Breath Award and Tufts University Graduate Student Research Award. Recent works have been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Emerson Urban Arts Gallery. Public art works that Yeager has performed in locally include Trying to Talk with Humans and Public Trust. He received his BFA in Ceramic Sculpture from the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology and his MFA in Studio Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
In the years between degrees,Yeager spent time in Taiwan as a Research and Studio Assistant to a Fulbright Scholar, lived in Seattle, WA as a Visiting Artist at Pottery Northwest and worked two summers as a Technical Assistant in the ceramics studio at Haystack Mountain School for the Crafts. Yeager also lived in the Hudson Valley in New York where he earned the Ceramic Technician position at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Prior to relocating the whole family to Boston in 2015, he lived and made art in Madison, WI. Yeager helps members of the ACT community develop strong planning and fabrication skills as the Technical Instructor for Fabrication.
