Turning the basketball courts into a drawing surface

Taliyah Medina ’24 looked at Kamine basketball court and saw a large flat surface on which to draw. She used shapes cut out from construction paper to turn the floor of the court into a coach’s play-drawing clipboard.

Medina is a former Lafayette women’s basketball player, having recently medically retired due to an ACL injury. Despite her injury she stays connected to the sport. Prior to Lafayette she played at Villanova and Bethlehem Catholic High School, where she was the 2020 4A Pennsylvania State Player of the Year, earned first team All-State honors as a sophomore and senior, and was a 1,000-point scorer.

Medina says she always liked drawing and creating, but basketball always came first. This project allowed her to put her life into artwork, sharing memories of her life through basketball. For this piece, she needed to first identify the language she’d use and the memories to be captured. The process was emotional, she says. The memories bring up moments of nostalgia, loss, and confidence.

The image was a temporary work for Art 209: Drawing II. Jim Toia, Medina’s drawing instructor and director of the Community-Based Teaching Program, said the project was intriguing and inspired.

“There are many parallels between drawing and athletics,” Toia says. “The discipline and the confidence that come into play in being a creative force apply to both artistic practice and to the psychological state of the high-performance athlete who gives themselves permission to take complete control. Taliyah’s ability to cross boundaries and find resonance between two disparate activities that are both so meaningful to her speaks volumes regarding how our approach to a multidisciplinary liberal arts education cultivates consilience and clarity for our students and the world.”