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meLand vignettes
Creating the hills: One evening I found myself digging through the recycle bin to pull out
some thick pieces of cardboard. For several days, they lay, unused on
my office floor. Then, one evening, in the midst of painting, I felt
drawn to the cardboard. I picked up the scissors, and off my hands
went... the hills were born. Creating the body: I knew that I wanted to have some kind of outline of the human body in meLand, but that I wanted her boundaries to be porous, open to the energy flow between her and land. As friends watch the project grow, they often found human curves within the hills. Still unsure about how the human form would emerge, I asked an artist friend to help me with some possible outlines for a human form. Even after all the practice I had had following my body, I did not trust my own to create a recognizable human outline. For several weeks I moved the cardboard template around the collage, eyeballing it to see where the shape should be placed. Still, though, I had come to no clear conclusion on where, or how I would integrate this human form into the emerging work.One evening, as I was working, my hand went to the sea  lettuce my mom had mailed me from Nova Scotia. After a few 'blobs' made their way onto the collage, I realized I was there: the human outline was begun. For the rest of the evening, I followed the curves of the human form created by my hand, palette knife, sea lettuce and the vague outline I had created with the assistance of my friend's template. This was the only actual drawing I did on the collage, but it was my hand, not my mind, or eye, that determined where she was to go and when she was to take form. |
