Sharing the wind drawing process – Walking Mount Caburn 9/10/17

Wind drawing on Mount Caburn

Sharing the wind drawing process – Mount Caburn 9/10/17

This collaborative wind drawing was made as part of the Walking Mount Caburn walking workshop for Phoenix, Brighton, and was introduced with a quote from “A Field Guide to getting Lost’ by Rebecca Solnit.

‘For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that colour of horizons, or remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The colour of that distance is the colour of an emotion, the colour of solitude and of desire, the colour of there seen from here, the colour of where you are not. And the colour of where you can never go.’ (pg 29)

The participants were introduced to the idea of being playful and sensitive around relinquishing agency between pen and paper, and that the interface of the drawing can be experienced as both a surface and a point in time that the passing wind activates and traces can collect. We noted where the wind was coming from and how it might connect to Solnit’s thoughts on distance.

‘We tried a wind drawing for the first time. Together as a team. What felt stimulating was the notion of creating marks to the rhythm of a wonderful force of nature – the wind. I have reflected on this experience a number of times since that day and have found it almost too hard to grasp. I must experience this again’ Sarah Davies Phoenix, Brighton

Witterings

Wind drawing flag, Witterings, 22nd August 2016

At Witterings I was able to make a large wind drawing by attaching the paper to a drift stick and lashing it to a low wooden groin. This flag, in an 11.4 mph wind, allowed me to work on a larger scale using a pen in each hand – and to encounter the tide on its return.

Video footage by Tony Gammidge

Four short Films – Drawing and Laser cut

Drawing with pencil on paper over a computational laser cut geometric base and a kind a machine poetic of a drawing (print) made by scanning drawing and making file for laser cut etch into paper. Each have back and forth repetition and perforate and puncture the surface of the paper. The pencil leaves a trace of graphite, while the laser coloures the paper through scorching.

 

Untitled from Arts Brighton on Vimeo.

Untitled from Arts Brighton on Vimeo.

Untitled from Arts Brighton on Vimeo.

Untitled from Arts Brighton on Vimeo.

Derrida – the brink of blindness

This is the quote from Jacques Derrida

The thought of drawing, a certain pensive pose, a memory of the trait that speculates, as in a dream, about its own possibility. Its potency always develops on the brink of blindness.

Derrida, Jacques, Memoirs of the Blind, the Self Portrait and other Ruins, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

And here is the text that refers to drawing as an ‘intransitive activity’. Hope it is useful.

Drawing Residency -Project Brief-

Wind drawing 27/6/16

Wind drawing made in sight of Burgh Island, June 27th 2016.

 

Here I have introduced a ‘text ball’ to encounter the wind drawing process. The text balls present fragments of mono printed thought in the form of words that have been scratched into a surface and transferred. The paper is Onion Skin. It is semi translucent and moves easily in the wind. The wind drawing serves to work with the text ball, adding and subtracting to allow a complex network of lines to build upon the surface.  Black and white ink is used in the drawings and serve to both make apparent and to cover, or ‘erase’.

In the first moving image clip the shadow of the pen works in tandem with the drawing implement to reveal the point of contact with the paper, which in turn begins to make visible the space where the switch between Ingold’s ‘threads and traces’ happen. When the shadow and the tip of the pen come together contact is made and a trace occurs. I find this image exciting and want to develop this way of revealing and capturing this.

‘Two kinds of line did seem to stand out from the rest, and I called them threads and traces. Yet on closer inspection, threads and traces appeared not so much categorically different as transforms of one another. Threads have a way of turning into traces, and visa versa. Moreover, whenever threads turn into traces, surfaces are formed, and whenever traces turn into threads, they are dissolved.’ Ingold, T. (2007) Lines: A Brief History, Routledge

Perfectionism

New development – instead of placing paper onto found readymade surfaces, such as wall’s, floors, table tops, etc I have begun a set of drawings in which I place the paper onto computational designed laser cut constructions. These seem to be a natural development – linking previous dot drawings with the recent breath drawings. The resulting drawings either need to be developed in tandem with as a separate set of work or conflated as part of the TtWL research project. They could fit the Perfectionism show that I will take part in early 2018. At the moment it is ok not to know, but both sets of work are dealing with touch and surface.IMG_6346 IMG_6347 IMG_6351 IMG_6360 IMG_6375 IMG_6365

Surfaces – front and back

The paper I am using is off cuts of Bank paper 30gsm and 45 gsm given to me by Helen Gibbs in bookbinding. Helen recommended I try layout paper for its whiteness, smoothness and weight.  Surfaces are so crucial, the surface of the paper and surface upon which the paper is placed for the activity of drawing. Every surface has its own quality and suggests depth, not a beyond the surface, but a concern with staying close to the surface, exploring what is on the surface both on the front [the side that is actively drawn upon] and the reverse [the side that that is a consequence of the activity]. ‘An attitude that is concerned with dwelling and being resident’. [Dean Hughes: ‘Dwelling as an approach to creative pedagogy’ p.74]. Even touching the surface lightly the paper is broken, punctured and torn.

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TO DO

Headings for Blog:

  • Articles & Presentations
  • Journal
  • Drawings
  • Readings
  • Documentation

Journal article [01.06.16]

  • Jane & Duncan to submit notes, quotes, references to Philippa by 13.05.16
  • PDF doc with 72dpi x 6 images embedded into doc.

APPRI meeting [09/10.06]

  • What do we want?
  • Meeting 26.05.16
  • Prepare in advance and ask CM to view
  • send Blog to CH & CG