Art 212: Topics in Drawing (Do It Again)
I’m writing this in 2022,three years after completing this undergrad drawing class. This was the second class I took with the amazing artist and teacher, Diana Frid. The theme of the class was repetition and iteration, which I really enjoyed.
Our first assignment was to draw 2 self-portraits as non-human entities. I chose “family” and “a song that gets stuck in your head.” The first piece is made from a piece of clothing from each member of my family. I like how the log cabin block shows the four quadrants… we’re all our own people, taking up our own space and living our own lives. yet we’re indelibly stitched together. The record is a pretend single for a song I often had in my head at the time, Being Alive by Frankie Cosmos. If you look closely you can see a stenciled version of my face in watercolor. The record itself is cardboard, with a quilt block label, lots of circles stitched by machine, and lots of hand-drawn circles and lyrics.
The next assignment was based on Richard Serra’s “Verbalist.” I chose the following prompts from his list of verbs: to layer, to collect, to dapple, to weave, and to fold/to reflect.
I focused further on the verb “to collect” for my next two pieces. For the first one, I did crayon rubbings of several of my many collections (enamel pins bottle caps, patches, rocks, my grandma’s iron trivets, etc). Then under each one I wrote the stories of the collections. I considered presenting this as a book and I still think I might do that. For the second one, I was thinking of something collecting in a pool, like raindrops… I eventually thought about marbles collecting at the end of a marble maze. I constructed this out of cardboard and tape, keeping it as spartan as I could so the structure could have strong, simple lines like a drawing. Instead of marbles I used tiny pieces of rolled vellum, on which I had written (collected) my thoughts during the days I was working on the project. By rolling these through the “marble run” instead of marbles, I attempted to crate a metaphor for the way thoughts run through our minds. They may or may not take the expected path, and in the end they can be collected and removed if we choose to recognize them as simply thoughts, not intrinsic parts of ourselves. That’s my study of meditation coming in . Mostly it was really fun to try to roll tiny floaty pieces of paper down this thing.
A third and final piece for the prompt “to collect.” I made even more of the velum strips and created this textile piece where they could pool and collect in the little pockets created by fabric and a few stitches. The strings could also be removed, which would change where the pieces of velum were collecting.
For our midterm we had to make two pieces that were responding to the work of another artist. I chose Jacob Hashimoto. The Oak Park library has a piece of his that I have always loved. I find his work to be extraordinarily beautiful. He works with modular units like thousands of paper kites. As a quilter I work with block units all the time, but wanted something that could also have a layering effect and some transparency, to put the pieces in conversation with Hashimoto’s work. I decided to use the 6-minute circle technique used by quilters, but to stop before the holes were filled and use them as open frames. In the first piece I was thinking mostly about color in a landscape. In the second I was thinking about passage of time, change, and the fog of memory.
For our next assignment we were asked to make fabric collages. I decided patchwork should count, and I cheated a little by using the opportunity to make progress on a quilt I had already planned to make. I did add some additional elements that were just for my drawing class, so I didn’t feel too bad. Eventually these patchwork panels did make their way into a finished quilt but it took a few years.
This piece was a bit of a joke about a certain novelty ice cream treat I can’t stop eating, then swear I’ll stop eating, but oops I can’t actually stop eating (the text reads, “The last box. For real this time”). I added the transparent grid element over the patchwork to further explore something that happened in the previous piece, a layering affect with unpredictable results. I wasn’t sure what was going to come through/be visible until I installed the piece.
Finally, my last project of the semester was this artist’s book about the experience of giving birth. I’m not sure why it occurred to me to make my book about birth, but I felt like this work just flowed out of me so I guess it was the right subject to choose. I learned how to bind a book for the first time, using a single sheet binding technique. I wrote the text first, then created the collages, then put everything together. The circles in the front and back of the book go from 1 to 10 centimeters, representing the opening of the birth canal. I love how this book turned out, it’s a very special object to me.
Looking back at all these projects makes me miss taking art classes. I loved being challenged by each new assignment and seeing myself in new ways as an artist. I hope someday I can dedicate more time to art making.
