recent class work - first directive

Here are some pieces of work I did for the online class I'm taking with Jane Davies. It's a self directed class that's organized around the idea of confining yourself in a series to a particular topic or method so that something unexpected can emerge.

For the first segment I decided to push engaging a spontaneous flow in my work process. I'd been feeling stuck in trying to control the outcome of my work, so with this project I wanted to feel how to put a piece together without so much mind influenced decision making. I wanted to feel how to allow a flow and not deliberate over the next move but to quickly respond.

As a starting point I chose collage with mono prints using the Gelli plate and leaves, something I'd been working on all summer. You can see the two pieces I used as starts in an earlier post. Instead of assembling all the parts and then putting it all together, I decided to abandon any kind of planning and only go forward one step at a time with no idea of what would happen next. I also found loads of freedom in not trying to decide whether a piece was finished, something Jane suggested as a way to keep things more open and less influenced by our usual aesthetic or discomfort.

As I kept at it, relying on energetic, intuitive responses, I realized this was something I was teaching my body how to do. There is a special "feel" to relying on a different way of putting things together, a different feel for being in the flow. And I found that meant bypassing the mind and all of it's usual creative dampening assessments. It was a non mental way of making art. Wow!! What freedom.

Here's some of this work from the first segment which is called Direction 1. These aren't necessarily finished pieces, just inspirations for moving on to the next piece. I have some preferences but that feels unimportant to the process.

no 1

no 2

no 3

no 4

no 5

no 6

no 7