Rip Rapson has created hundreds of drawings throughout his career. His meticulously detailed sketches have found their way into a White House cabinet meeting, the Detroit bankruptcy trial, and university discussions of philanthropy and society. The Kresge Foundation President & CEO uses pencils and paper to make sense of and communicate his vision of structural change efforts in America’s cities.

In a new Chronicle of Philanthropy feature, Portrait of the Grant Maker as an Artist, Rapson says: Distilling complex ideas and conversations onto a page “forces you to see the relationships among things and to make your own judgment about whether they add up to a coherent whole.”

The profile illustrates how Rapson, “a lawyer versed in the arcanery of policy and grant making, has an artistic bent.” Writer Drew Lindsay also shares the creative influence of Rapson’s father, an internationally renowned architect, and his mother, who was a volunteer in the children’s literature archives at the University of Minnesota.

• Read the article online or download the PDF.
• View the full July Issue.
• Watch a video of Rapson creating a drawing and see more examples of his work.