Suddenly we are at that point in the year where we wonder how we are now halfway through it! Feeling the centrifugal force of time consolidating at speed and everything happening all at once. Well, that has been my feeling anyway as I have been thrust from bouts of deep sickness, recovery, and back to health whilst the world still keeps spinning and I’m jumping into the flow of it all.
A constant that has remained during this time has been my drive to connect to my creative force, which might usually have fallen down defeated along with my health at other times. I feel thankful for our Masterclasses with Estela Saez-Vilanova and the community of my fellow Handshakers through our Zoom sessions for providing structure, purpose, and belonging to keep the fire of this energy stoked and nourished to bear against the brunt.
A part of the process has been to RESPOND. In many ways, it is a great relief to not have to create the parameters of a creative task yourself, but just have the job of responding, interpreting, and exploring the possibilities of what has been asked of you by the ‘taskmaster.’ There is a sense of freedom in that which is liberating, especially when you have a brain that tends to overthink or struggle to make decisions.
This style of working which Estela has employed, setting challenges that mostly encourage us to respond quickly, and instinctively, at first often loosely with blind drawings and quick-fire 15-minute material challenges, to longer self-directed ‘homework’ tasks, creates a story where we can start to see for ourselves, a traceable trajectory of a more jointed exquisite corpse-like outcome. It’s fun to see what comes out, knowing it is still of myself, but not necessarily somewhere I would have gotten to through my own usual devices. It feels like a way of tapping into something ‘other.’
I tend to work intuitively as it is. I have admiration for the precise kind of making that requires planning, measuring, logical sequence, and steps, but inherently, this is not my approach. I can’t help it, I’m quietly loud, sometimes bold, often messy. I don’t often measure, I rely on my hands, and a surge of excitement in my gut and mind’s eye to go by feel. I’m far more comfortable throwing fire and lust toward something and seeing it melt and turn to mud than getting stuck in my head with planning which would likely see me stifled and hitting a brick wall. But then again, there are different modes of making, I think this applies to making art and generating new ideas, as opposed to more routine and tested models of production work which are sometimes born of the former described process too.
So, here are some snippets of what has been conjured up in this past month of our Masterclass with Estela. I’m feeling at a bit of a slight loss as we approach our last month under her tutelage and the unknown of what will come next. I will try to remain with the feeling of trusting in the process and my ability to now know how to swim and stay afloat.
Material explorations, using what was on hand… Cut off old pair of leggings, old hub cap wire, needle & thread + lighter, and the addition of spray paint.
From blind drawings to a 20-minute ring challenge…
It all is evolving whilst still embodying the essence of what came before…
