Random and Abundance
February 3, 2010 by Janice
Sumi ink, Color Pencil, Watercolor Washes, Graphite, and newsprint, Janice Cartier, February 2010
Found materials are a goldmine to encourage flow. They reduce impediments that you may subconsciously or consciously have. And besides, newspapers have great texture to play off. They can be subtle co-conspirators actually with all their shades of grey.
These are some ink contours I did yesterday to play with a few forms, some shells and my hiking boots in these three. There are others but these three, I rather like. Not because they are so great as is, and exactly because they are so great as is, for where they may take me.
Have taken me already.
Because something strangely weird and oddly puzzling happened as I was doing this, picking up one piece of collected paper, doing a casual ink drawing of one thing, no plan, then doing the next. It was just “found” paper.
Later, when they dried,
I noticed the headlines and the text on the pages:
The shells in the lower front in the photo happen to be done on the weather report, and the ad on the page is for a collection of treasure boxes with maps and badlands, ducks and chiefs on the top. That’s the back side where the ink seeped from the drawing I did on the front. I liked it better. It’s the side I used color on to explore shape within shapes. Straight against curved. On the inside, the page I drew on , the text was about stories within stories…things not apparent on first glance.
The shells above that piece, the deep dark ink on that blue block and sterile office photo, the flowing spirals and ruffled edges, is drawn across a story with the headline: “Climate legislation would cost chipmakers.” I had imposed a natural form on a grid and asked them to accommodate each other. Not knowing.
And the third, my hiking boots, rather badly drawn and foreshortened, hike across an article about an island in Croatia “buffeted by history retains ancient rhythms”. I had merely picked up something with a little color on it, the next sheet in. My Island hiking boots. Ancient rhythms. That I have traced.
Random.
It strikes me as odd, that the words on the pages could very much be a part of what I had just done. Apt in some form or fashion. And yet I did not consciously choose them.
But I DID choose to impose organic forms on geometric pages.
I AM choosing to come at things from some opposite directions than I normally would in doing a formal piece.
And yet, what crops up? Things that have very much to do with the heart of my work.
Only I don’t know how I’ll put these together.
Well, not yet.
But I am choosing to look and ask and maybe see.
Paths.
Some things to play on and with today…
And as I snapped the pic this morning for you, I noticed, hm…they actually could work together as a composition….they could be explored…colored, collaged, cut…or even painted…to find out more about scribbles and a vacant mind….organics and geometry, or warm and cool, and nothing made into something, or how an artist finds a way in…using fragments from her former life, experiments…to get into her next one.
A vacant mind, some time…and a little random….putting yourself in flow.
Small things, small steps, small what is this? are exactly what we’re after…
To keep, or discard.
Who knows?
Better not to judge just yet….just follow the path a bit.
Explore.
Yep, private studio.
You just never know….
And that’s actually a very good thing.
It keeps a sparkle in your eye and an eagerness to your work.
The artist smiles.
How about you? How much time do you spend on the map and off, in what you do? Do you leave space for exploring?
Comments
7 Responses to “Random and Abundance”
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Oooooooooooooooo
uh OH
I bet these yummy doodles of yours planted a subliminal bomb in my brain leading me to show doodles today too…
Hmmmmm
not that my doodles could ever get near yours
NEVER!!!
I LOVED your doodles today.
I am going back in for more doodles today…just saw something else that intrigues me…something to play with….
Boy sure is easy to spend some bucks on pastry in Paris isn’ it? Great field work, that…LOL
I had so much fun following your doodle tale!
“Found materials are a goldmine to encourage flow.”
This reminds me of Robert Rauschenberg’s collages, which I love!
Hi Merisi!!!,
I have always drooled over Rauschenberg…now you mention it these do go there…I love that!! I like a lot of the Black Mountain School, their experiments in transitional times…Huge fan of Jacob Lawrence and Jasper Johns too. I like to use found materials in studio practices a lot.. very freeing.
So good to see you here. Will pop over to see what you have been up to.
Merisi ‘finds’ gorgeous subjects to photograph BTW.. for those of you who haven’t met her.
…things not apparent on first glance… fascinating
Joanna,
…It has sent me on an inquiry that I very much like…:)
[...] is a nice thickness of corrugated cardboard, malleable yet strong. And that newspaper, well, we saw what I am doing with newspaper at the moment. And those books…dare I cut them up? Or paint in them? Play with images and text? Perhaps [...]