“Drawing someone is kind of personal. You’re staring across the table into the eyes of someone you’ve just met.”
That’s Worcester artist Greg Hamilton’s summary of the yearly Worcester Portrait Exchange, which he founded as a way to build connections between artists of all ages, backgrounds and skill levels as they meet for the first time to draw each other’s portraits.
“It’s sort of like speed dating, but for making platonic art friends, but also it’s the opposite of speed dating, because it’s a slow, meditative thing,” Hamilton said. “Time slows down when you really look at someone and draw them.”
‘A surprise mix of people’
This year’s Worcester Portrait Exchange will take place at 2 p.m. Aug. 10 at the Jean McDonough Arts Center on Franklin Street in downtown Worcester. Participation is free, though organizers Hamilton and Matt Burgos recommend signing up online beforehand, and the exchange is open to all skill levels, ages 11 and up.
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“It’s a complete surprise and mix of people from all walks of life who show up,” Hamilton said. “You’ve got the high school kids who are really into anime and illustration, quiet wallflower kids who like to draw. You’ve got older professional artists who live in Worcester and keep a low profile. You’ll have a 14-year-old who just started drawing paired up with a professional watercolorist who does this for a living.”
The only requirement, Hamilton said, is “being a little bit adventurous, because you’re willing to show up to something like this that’s interactive and quickly be acquainted with someone you’ve never met before.”
The portrait exchange will consist of two sessions, at 2 and 3 p.m., to give every artist a chance to participate.
Each artist will be matched with a stranger, and the pair will sit down opposite each other. The Portrait Exchange will provide a variety of art supplies, including pastels and watercolors, and artists will work on each other’s portraits while, ideally, starting a conversation and learning about each other’s lives.
“You spend about 25 minutes drawing the person you just met, and you take turns, so the other person draws you. At the end of the hour, you give each other your pictures and go home with a portrait of yourself by a new person you just got to know,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton began the Worcester Portrait Exchange in 2015 shortly after moving to the city, in hopes of making friends who shared his passion for art and “inventing a social situation that feels more comfortable for someone like me, who is introverted but tends to connect well with other artists.”
The first Portrait Exchange brought in a bigger crowd than Hamilton had even hoped for, so he turned it into an annual event. In 2021, finding that his responsibilities as a new father were taking up too much of his time, Hamilton handed over most of the organizing duties to Burgos, a fellow artist with whom he shared a studio near Webster Square.
‘I wanted to bring people together’
The original idea for the Worcester Portrait Exchange began long before Hamilton came to Worcester. While living in Baltimore, he worked at the arts nonprofit Creative Alliance, which held art events for all skill levels on the weekends, and he was impressed by the wide range of artists who would come to practice and improve their craft.
“On a Friday or Saturday night, you would have this incredibly diverse group of people show up. It was a very diverse ethnic mix, which, in Baltimore, is difficult to do because the social scene is so segregated,” Hamilton said. “I wanted to bring people together who might not get together on a Friday night to do something social.”
Hamilton said he saw a similar phenomenon at the Worcester Portrait Exchange, where area residents who had little in common and would not ordinarily cross paths would form cross-cultural friendships.
“Worcester’s got incredible ethnic diversity that I see the city starting to embrace as part of the creative fabric,” Hamilton said. “I’ve met professional artists who came to Worcester as refugees and had no idea what the art community was like or where to start. They showed up here and immediately got to know other artists in the community.”
The Worcester Portrait Exchange
When: 2 to 5 p.m. Aug. 10
Where: The Jean McDonough Arts Center, 20 Franklin St., Worcester
How much: Free, online registration is encouraged through the Worcester Portrait Exchange page on Facebook.
