Drawing as Stimming by Sam Metz exists as an ongoing project with thanks to widespread organisational support, but particularly from Chris Erskine and Necessity.info who believed in the project and the ideas.
The project originally started as a platform to legitimize non-verbal communication such as stimming and to find a place for it within art making and art interpretation. Work in this field quickly became and continues to be more expansive, framed by ideas of neuroqueering (first described by Nick Walker) and seeks to create radical reconicilliation with normative expectations held for neurodivergent people in the art industry and beyond. Sam Metz has framed a praxis towards depatholgisation of stimming, opening up space for consideration of stimming as a form of languaging. Metz’ claim is that stimming has a richness, affect, and communicative potential that make it a suitable praxis for paying dedicated attention to space and place. In problematizing sterotypy of stimming as deficit behavior, Sam describes new and complex relationships with art and ecology. The practice of drawing as stimming has been forged from widespread collaboration, from their pedagogy working with medical students to their collaborations with many neurodivergent artists of all ages.
(For Sams sculptural practice please visit www.sammetz.com)