Color outside the lines

To look inside bodies and meditate one’s own way into them makes it possible to let them become landscapes that are permeated with streams of energy, pulsating craters and mountain-like formations… You approach a hidden centre, maybe the solar plexus and follow a circular motion or energy threads of breathing. It’s almost as if you were… using colour to penetrate the layer of an enigmatic landscape that gradually finds its own rhythm in the lines.  Rebecca Horn

I have no idea what this writing means–but I do have this visual in my imagination of the circular motion, one that’s multi-colored and spins and spins, like a ballerina, helping me finding a settling in my soul. What does it conjure up for you?

Today’s Assignment:

1. Pick the smallest pieces you can find out of your collage scraps. Figure out some kind of organization of them. Maybe it’s by color, or perhaps shape. Play around with them for sometime before committing. When I do this, I often have a second collage going at the same time. What works for one might not work for the other.
2. Once you have a composition you like, glue it all down. Admire your work.
3. Add a packing tape transfer. And why a transfer, why not just glue something down? In this example, to get the ballerina’s skirt details cut out would take extreme patience, super sharp blades and incredible eye sight. But also, by making the transfer I am able to have the yellow show through her body, so she’s integrated into the composition more completely.

NOTE: Commonplace books became a way of keeping together one’s notes made from reading during the Renaissance and became quite popular during the late 1800’s. They hold all kinds of things one wanted to remember and ideally were cataloged in such a way that the maker could find the notes at a later date. Pinterest serves this purpose for some people. But what about those notes made when reading a novel, at an art exhibit, or just in the world that you want to remember, and maybe one day might want to reference? I keep a notebook/sketchbook with me at all times for these kinds of moments. Finding something in them might take years, and I often think about other ways of keeping my notes together.

Motivated Mastery recently described how to use Evernote to keep one’s Commonplace writings. It was compelling enough for me to think I want to start using Evernote for this purpose. This is relevent today because I have no recollection as to where or when I found Rebecca Horn’s artist statement by Rebecca Horn.