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| Goddard College - Port Townsend, WA |
What will the 'body-centered' part of this look like?
From my Spring 2012 study plan:
In order to build a more embodied art practice, I will work with manual processes and traditional media: figure drawing, large paintings that use my entire body, sculptural body casts, and linocuts, lithographs, and serigraphs made by hand. I recognize that it is possible to engage in these very physical processes and not reconnect with my body. To that end, I will use movement: Kundalini yoga, the sensory-based Nia, ecstatic dance, and the movement-based acting technique known as Viewpoints. As I do these exercises, I want to record the knowledge from my body in a journal. What will begin as weekly classes I want to become part of my daily life. The works I intend to make this semester will focus on the female form in ways I never have before, as my own body awareness increases. My body has nearly three decades of stories gathered within it. It is time for me to learn to listen to them.
Wait. What? Serigraphs? Lithographs? Yes. I have long wanted to explore more and varied printmaking processes, because I am curious and because different printmaking techniques yield very different looking results. I'd like to spend a bit this semester playing with media of all kinds, even if nothing tangible comes from it. No matter the media, though, I want to concentrate on my body as subject and object in my work.
I have a feeling this will lead to lots of very interesting work.
Oh, and feel free to recommend other artists whose work I should look at, books I should read, or shows I should check out.
I just wrote a very long comment which I have lost completely attempting to post it - I may try to give the gist tomorrow but in the meantime here were the 2 artists I was recommending :
ReplyDelete1 Shelagh Cluett
2 Ismail Gulgee
Ok better late than never ! Both artists I mention were very prolific so ;
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of Ismail Gulgee's large calligraphic paintings discussed interestingly by Akbar Naqvi in " Image & Identity - 50 years of painting and sculpture in Pakistan "
and
Shelagh Cluett's 70s gestural ( and to me , calligraphic ) work recently exhibited by the Henry Moore Institute here in Leeds . Look at http://www.shelaghcluett.com/archive.html and then at the catalogue Artworks part 03 . Relevant is the fact that she loved dancing and reported of teaching in Venezuela that her students didn't listen to her until they had seen her dance at a party .
Calligraphy is explicitly compared with martial arts in the film 'Crouching Tiger , Hidden Dragon' - so I wondered if you had considered them in relation to your planned bodywork ?
And finally I remembered that RG Collingwood in " The Philosophy of Art " argued that any visual work is essentially a record of the body movements that produced it . I'm not sure - but it's well worth a look .