To apply to RISD, one of the best art schools in the country, you've got to submit a drawing of a bicycle, done in graphite pencil. This is a longstanding tradition, and I assume it was adopted because a bicycle is something everyone's familiar with, but also a big tangle of beautifully arranged moving parts. Drawing one requires smart choices about what to leave in and what to keep out. Willis Earl Beal didn't go to art school but apparently draws often and well. "I like to believe I do art because I have to do it—it's like vomit," he told the Chicago Reader last summer. The video for the sweet and simple "Evening's Kiss" is a stop-motion river of his line drawings, starring a city bus, puff-jacket and one efficiently rendered bicycle. Beal plays live in Europe and the US through April. Check out dates here.
