Traces and Transference
Project Description
Armed with tracing paper (or mylar) and/or iphones, you will collect information through tracing. Pay attention and LOOK EVERYWHERE to find possible information. The linoleum on the floor? The wood grain and screws on a bench? Dried gum on the sidewalk? Spray-painted construction marks? Peeling paint on an old house?
You may begin with a broad spectrum of place to test out ideas. Eventually, you will need to choose a specific place to gather information from. This can be from a specific courtyard, room, lobby, building, park, etc. This can be inside and/or outside depending on the space.
Also, observe the colors, smells, sounds, light that you encounter in your chosen space.
You will then come back to the studio and create art from your collected information.
Mapping the Invisible
How does one map that which is not visible? Is the invisible possible in this age of brain scans, genetic mapping, and drone warfare? What is still “invisible”?
Spend time generating ideas about what is not visible, or what you consider “unmappable”. We will discuss these as a group.
Once you settle on your concept, consider your means of representation.
How do we represent something that we have no source for? Where do we draw our ideas from?
What materials will you use? What will the scale be?
The Faceless Self Portrait: Mapping our Bodies
Project Description:
We are used to looking in the mirror to create a self portrait: a representation of self is a representation of our physical faces, our gaze meeting itself. What would a self-portrait look like that instead considered the idea of body mapping?
Questions:
What are you mapping: physical appearance, movement, or feeling? A sickness, a journey, a visualization of energy moving through your system?
How have other artists conceptualized this question?
Is your body a main component in the creation of your work? (It does not have to be, but consider this)
How is the scale of your work related to your body? Can we hold it? Step inside it?
Discovery: Finding the Unknown in a Mapped World
Project Description:
Print or purchase a map of Charleston and/or surrounding area. Pick a random place on the map that you have never been to – you have NO IDEA of what is there, no mental picture, nothing. Go to this place. Spend time there by yourself. You may write, take photos, video, draw. You may just observe. Make art in response to the place.
Questions:
How can the art be in response to the place, not an illustration of it?
Does the art need to exist in the place, or not?
Do you want to work from information you collect, or from memory?
How is the final form/structure/materiality/color of your art related to the site?
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