Dawn Stearns by Joseph Mann
- Title: Dawn Stearns
- Artist: Joseph Mann
- Medium: Charcoal
- Size: 11"h x 7.5"w
- Creation date: 1995
- Added to collection: 2014
- Donor: Gift of Richard Helzer
- Campus: Rock Creek
- Location: B7/2 NW Back Hall gallery
The crucial decisions of looking are most clearly visible in an artist's drawings, which cannot hide their means, glories or struggles. A strong sense of abstraction informs the bold silhouette of Dawn Sterns' profile (one of the artist's favorite models in the mid to late 1990's) but this drawing also shows an intense scrutiny of the particular and subtle proportions of the relative positions of the features of the head. It is both a strong abstraction and an accurate rendering.
When Richard Helzer received the Gordon Galbraith Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1996, he used the stipend to purchase this drawing for Rock Creek's then small but growing art collection.