Self Portrait

The project in one of my process art classes a few months ago, was to do a series of Self Portraits using clay, charcoal, and tea, coffee and ink.

For the first one we were given a mirror and a large lump of clay.
Sitting comfortably and holding the clay in our hands, we did a guided meditation.
We then placed the clay on the desk in front of us and with our eyes closed, were instructed to carefully and slowly feel our face, ... our ears, ... our head ... and our neck. We did this a few times using both our hands, first our fingertips and then our whole hand.
When we were done, we started to mould the ball of clay into a self portrait. We could look at our refection in the mirror and at times we closed our eyes and worked intuitively, feeling our way around the clay and occasionally referring back by feeling our faces and heads with our hands.

You would think that with all this care taken to explore your own face, and to carefully mould it out of clay, you would manage to achieve a pretty close resemblance of yourself  in your final sculpture.

So, I ask you, with tears in my eyes...

Who the hell is THIS Guy !??   LOL




Self Portrait in clay

Self Portrait in clay - side view



Charcoal sketch of Self Portrait in clay



Self Portrait in charcoal



Self Portrait - wet on wet using tea, coffee and black ink



Giraffes

As I mentioned in my previous post, "Geisha", the second term of my process art classes focused very much on letting go of our inner critic. This was done in a number of ways, from passing your work around the class where each student got to add something to your work, to working with a blindfold on.

 

In this class we started off blindfolded once again. We used inks, tea, coffee, charcoal and chalk pastels to fill the page with random markings. We covered a number of pages, working fairly quickly, without much thought given to what we were doing.

The pages looked something like this:

 

One of the textured pages created using a mixture of tea, coffee, inks, charcoal and chalk pastels.

 

We lay the pages out on the floor and were asked to choose one that "spoke" to us. One that seemed to have a hidden image or images.

I unfortunately don't have a photo of what my chosen page looked like before I worked into it, but what I saw at first were 3 GIRAFFES! Two of them were quite humorous and cartoon-like, and another was more realistic. I also saw a couple of birds. I used a wash of black ink, some charcoal and chalk pastels to help define the shapes that I was seeing.

 

My final artwork, "Giraffes"

 

I was horribly disappointed at the end of this class. Not only did I end up with what I considered to be a really ugly picture, but I also didn't see any obvious meaning or feel any connection with the giraffes. The end result is not meant to be important, but it is always a bonus if it turns out well. I hadn't particularly enjoyed the process either, so I went home feeling rather cheated :(

 

The following day, on Facebook, a friend shared how her daughter had been gored by a tame boar and needed stitches in her leg. In her status update she said, "It has forced us to slow down. Assess, and figure out what this "Boar Medicine" means."

Boar Medicine? I had no idea what that was so I did an internet search. My search took me to a page about Native American Animal Medicine where I read,

"The Native American practice of "animal medicine" embraces an awareness that reveals itself when a certain animal crosses our path."

And, 

" Animal Medicine is that which you need to learn RIGHT NOW! and the lesson that is coming across your IMMEDIATE path. Another animal may come cross your path tomorrow. Your attention may be called to one of these animals through television, conversation, daily experience, etc. Regardless of how one of these animals comes across your path, study the message and apply to your daily Life . . . they have a message for you!"

 





Detail of "Giraffes"





 

The Giraffes...

Okay, so it may have been a bit desperate of me and really silly to have wanted to find meaning in the work I'd done the previous evening, but I couldn't help myself...

I looked up "Giraffe Medicine" and found this:

 

"Today Giraffe is letting you know that it's time to stick your neck out. Start making new connections, stretch yourself, reach as far as you can. You are up for the challenge."

 

And yes, of course it made sense to me... I'd just finished making a list of gift shops, online shops and markets that I could approach about selling some of the goodies that I make. Seriously!

 

So, the next time an animal crosses your path... ;)

Geisha

During the second term of my process art classes, the focus was very much on letting go of your inner critic. It was about surrendering to the process and not worrying about or planning the end result. This was done in a number of ways, from passing your work around the class where each student got to add something to your work, to working with a blindfold on.

 

In this class we prepared pages of rubbings, blindfolded. We chose various textured or patterned objects beforehand that could be rubbed over with wax crayon. We worked quickly and filled each page without much thought given to what we were doing.

The pages looked something like this:
 

Page of rubbings done with wax crayon.

 

Once we'd filled a number of pages with texture, we lay them out on the floor and were asked to choose one that "spoke" to us. One that seemed to have a hidden image.

 

I unfortunately don't have a photo of what my chosen page looked like before I worked into it with tea bags and inks.

I saw the outline of a woman's face with her hair pinned up. She had a thin elegant neck and her eyes (the birds) had luscious false eye lashes. I darkened the background with a wash of black ink to bring her out into the light.



The final artwork called Geisha

Detail of the face with the 'bird eyes'

Another detail of the artwork 'Geisha'

 



The week before I did this artwork, I bought a pair of false eye lashes made from feathers for a friend. She was going to Afrika Burn and I thought they would be a great accessory to add to her fancy dress outfits. Of course I wasn't thinking of the false eyelashes at the time of creating this artwork.

 

When I looked at the woman in my final work, the name 'Geisha' immediately sprung to mind even though she does not look Japanese or have black hair.

The term "geisha" is made of two Japanese words, (gei) meaning "art" and (sha) meaning "person who does" or "to be employed in".

 

The most literal translation of geisha to English is "artist".

 

Well, I suppose I am a "Geisha" in training. :)