Part 4 Environmental Interventions Project 1: Found Images

Aim: The aim of this project is to broaden our view of what line is by looking at drawings created in nature and capture them.

Method: Collect photos and sketches of naturally created drawings in natural or urban environments.

On a sunny day I took my recently acquired DSLR camera and looked for drawings on my house and yard. I could see drawings everywhere. I did not know what to capture and what to leave out. I mostly worked with shadow drawings of objects on surface. I also used water to water my plants and capture the drawings created on the soil. I was drawn to the act of discovering those ready made drawings. I walked mostly looking downwards. I felt very present in this act. I felt like being part of the light and surface that created those drawings and not just an observer. It was a very pleasant and fulfilling experience. I was satisfied by the immediate result of the artistic act of photographing my discovered drawings. One thing I wish was if I knew how to operate my camera in order to be able to use it more creatively, and be able to handle the light and dark areas in an interesting way. But at this point there is the line of the photograph itself becoming the artwork. Photography is an art, but how about a painter using photograph. Where is the borderline of being a photography artist and a painter using photographs. Is there actually a borderline these days that art is so diffuse. I tend to believe that is a matter of the used media which in the case of photography art the medium is the camera in a similar way that a brush and paint would be the medium for a painter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am excited by the visual result of the presentation of those ”drawings”- photographs. The way I put them , the order they are placed take significant role and creates a more wide drawing constructed by individual drawings.

The next step for this exercise is to go outside and make sketches of the same subject.

Another idea is to make drawings of those photographs and compare those drawings with the sketches created from life.

 

25/4/2018

Sometimes when my energy is low, is easier to stay at home and do something ”easy” to get things going. One of these days lead to the following work. I had the idea to print some of the photos of this exercise and see what I could do with them without putting much effort since I was feeling very subdued.

I placed the photographs on tracing paper aiming to create a composition by tracing over the main lines. I enjoyed the procedure as it was like meditation and tension relieving. at the same time I felt rewarded by the outcome and by the fact that I was able to be creative and keep things going even if I wasn’t at a productive state and mood.

 Then I though of gluing the photos on a black background to make another composition with the printed out photos. I really do like the minimalistic effect of this presentation.

I used ink spilled over one of the compositions. This was a spontaneous act as I though ”what if I spoil what I had just done?”. Actually I don’t think I spoiled it! It was a positive intervention that added an interesting element on the composition.

What is needed to be done now is to find the energy to go outside and sketch! I might have to push myself to get into a productive state again!

“Theorimata” Deductive and Axiomatic Systems National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens

4/3/2018

https://www.facebook.com/EMST.NationalMuseumofContemporaryArt.Athens/

Θεωρήματα

http://www.aica-hellas.org/el

During my visit to Athens I had the opportunity to visit the exhibition “Theorimata Deductive and Axiomatic Systems”. It was an exhibition organised by the Hellenic Department of the INTERNATIONAL UNION OF CRITICAL ARTS. 

My most prominent sensation during and after my visit was the diversity of the kinds of the artistic expression and practice and the limited presence of  pure paining. Installations, sculptures – 3 dimensional work, video art, photographs and in general art consisted by a variety of media, objects and execution methods.

I found the summation of the works interesting while some of the works were more attractive for me.

The following work is an installation by Ersi Hatziargyrou, Digging into memory anew, 2017-18, Barbed wires, mesh, iron, bronze, straw, Lavrion’s soil and stones, motor. Is a work that brought to my mind the ”machines” of Rebecca Horn, that I studied In Part 3 (Physicality and gesture) of the course (https://wordpress.com/post/drawing2blog.wordpress.com/1090).

I find this installation very well designed and constructed with a specific background thinking. At the same time I see a sculpture that is aesthetically and compositionally attractive.

Another work that I was attracted to was the work of Costis, 6th Fragment from No man’s land: Ritual of the Alphabet, 1988-2012, Installation (mixed media, variable dimensions), Donated by the artist, 2012, National Museum of Contemporasry art, Athens, Inv No 855/12.

This installation included a few mirrors that you could see your reflection in. This caught my attention as I use mirrors for the exploration of identities and relationships in my parallel project.

I perceive the use of the mirror in this specific installation as an invitation to partake in an art act that consists the art piece -installation and to have an interdepartmental experience.

By including mirrors in my drawings of identities and relationships, I expect the viewers to see their reflections as part of the drawings. This refers to the viewers that are also depicted in the drawings who they  are related to me as the creator of the drawings. I seek to a conversation and an interplay of my self portraits and portraits of my significant family members. By using the mirror two or more portraits become part of the same drawing. One could see their reflections in the portraits of the others and a way for this to be achieved is through mirror reflections.

Van Gogh Alive, The experience 4D Exhibition

4/3/2018

Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists. I am attracted by the essence of the era and the places that he had lived. I always loved to escape to other epochs through watching movies or reading books. I like his expressiveness that it is transmitted through intensive brushstrokes. Τhe emotional charge is transmitted through the color. the colours that the artist chooses, change according to his different life stages and areas of living. The  colours the artist uses in the Netherlands, Paris and Arles are differentiated accordingly.

Connecting parts of identity

I am in Athens. The city I came 20 years ago,just after finishing high school to go to the university where I studied Psychology. Five important years of my life I have lived here. And I haven’t visited for the last ten years.

I came here alone.I came a different person now. I was a young student and now I am a wife and a mother. This trip is a part of my parallel project as I realized a few days before coming. I came here to connect two different parts of my identity which is what I mainly explore in my parallel project. It also has to do with my relationship with my husband and my children. This is the place me and my husband met and started our relationship 16 years ago. It is a place and story we share. This has to do with our relationship which I explore in parallel project. I am here away from my husband and our children because of the quality of our relationship. I can be connected with them while I can still be a separate independent person. And the three of them consist a different subteam of our family. These are subjects that I will explore in my parallel project. Self identity through the relationship with my family.

This cognitive and sentimental process is part of the parallel project process. It consists a conceptual background for the exploration of my chosen theme. I aim at finding creative ways to depict this exploration through drawing.

Reflective account for Part 3

Part 3 was dedicated to the exploration of physicality and gesture. The preface in the coursebook points out the importance of the way the artists uses his body movement to make a drawing. By holding a drawing medium you make it an extension of your body. Therefore there is a connection between the body and the drawing medium. On the one end there is a slight connection between the body movement and the drawing medium, and in such drawings we are not able to follow the flow of the mark making. At the extend of this connection the body becomes the drawing media. One example is Yves Klein work, Anthropometries of the Blue Period, 9 March 1960. Klein’s models smear themselves with paint and create imprints with their bodies on the drawing surface. (Amy Dempsey, Styles Schools and Movements, Thames  Hudson, 2004). In this case the art is not only what it is produced by this body movement in connection with the paint, but the act is part of the artwork as well. Another example of connecting the body with the drawing medium can be seen to children’s artworks with finger paints.

In part 3 projects I had the opportunity to try different ways of exploring the relation of the drawing medium and the body movement. In the first project the exercise was to make blind drawings. By limiting the sensation of vision I was able to pay more attention to the movement and draw in a more liberated way as I wasn’t able to go into the process of controlling and criticizing the composition, the mark making, the correctness and the appearance of the drawing. I could only judge the final piece and I was pleased with the flow of the mark making and the expressive qualities of the drawings that actually were interesting and had a sense of liveliness.

In the second project I used elongated drawing media by attaching pencil, brush and charcoal at the edge of a long quite flexible stick. As in the previous project this was a very liberating experience of drawing. I was able to create compositions with rich line mark making. I was pleased with being liberated by the need to draw details. I enjoyed the interplay between my wish to control my medium and my medium’s resistance to my endeavor. It was a dialectic process which can be read on the drawings.

In the third project the purpose was to find a way to create marks with the intervention of a ”machine”. For this project I decided to create marks through my children’s movements. My ”machine” became my son’s bicycle and his act of cycling on paper with the wheels of the bicycle being painted with pastels. The video of the act, the produced imprints of the wheels on the paper and my following intervention on a part of the produced drawing are the art pieces relating to this theme. I also asked my daughter to paint her feet with pastels and dance on paper laid on the floor. The video of the act, the drawing created by her feet prints are the art pieces that resulted. In addition I plan to intervene on part of the imprinted area to make a drawing regarding my daughter in a narrative way. All these should be viewed together for a more comprehensive read of the artwork. This Project was one of the more interesting projects for me, because it escapes from the usual way of approaching a subject in drawing.

The final project was also very interesting. It responds to my own art questions. The aim of the project was to make drawings focusing on the emotional aspect of certain statements. The aim was to find a way to reward certain conceptual or emotional states in drawing. Emotion is interwoven with my work in art so far. This project gave me the opportunity to further explore the depiction of emotions in drawings.

The Assignment subject was to make a drawing that responds to a music piece. The mark making and composition should be created by movements as generated from the listening of a chosen rhythmically complex music piece. I worked directly for a final piece. I didn’t made any preparatory work as I thought that this would give more directness to the drawing. I could repeat the exercise to explore different music pieces relating to different mood and observe how different each piece turns out. It was an interesting way of working. I should work quickly and stay focused while being able to change my media and my movement accordingly  to respond to the complexity of the rhythm in the music piece.