Last week I was asked to present my work to Angela Hennessy’s class at the California College of the Arts, called The Dying Salon. This studio class for graduate and undergraduates explores themes of death, loss, and bereavement in contemporary art. I was honored to be included in the syllabus. I presented images of the Passage Quilting™ and Prayer Banner projects, along with two other projects on afterlife, and transformation.
When I was in art school at Bard College in 2004, I presented Passage Quilts and the Prayer Banner for my third year critique. The question of whether my work was considered “Art” or not came up, as it always did while I was at Bard.
In 2011, the debate at CCA seems to be around conceptual vs. embodied art. My work falls in the embodied camp, but when I was in art school the frames used for defining “Art” were still under the spell of the post modern and avant-garde critique.
Recently a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, writing a story on the How-To-Homestead Tour, asked me this question…
In your opinion, why are traditional homesteading skills important in this age of technology and convenience?
My answer…
The physical movement of our bodies in the act of making things imparts knowledge that can not be discovered conceptually or by thinking something through or by viewing a youtube video.
Then she asked me to rephrase for a broader audience, something less esoteric. I responded with…
The human genome project has shown that knowledge is encoded on a cellular level through our DNA. As a crafts person I believe that we can know certain things only through the repetitive and skillful movement of our bodies in space.
Body knowledge allows the potter to throw a perfect bowl, or a musician the ability to play their instrument with success. Mastering such things with our bodies or through our hands connects us to our physical environment in ways not possible through thought alone.
Where do you stand on embodied knowledge or embodied art? Have you learned things through your hands or your body from practicing your craft that you wouldn’t have learned otherwise?
The images above are from my MFA thesis installation called the Realm of Complete Joy. More on this later…
okay, phew, i’m not crazy. HERE is the post I read that made me think of you as being affiliated with the California College of the Arts.
Maybe not a student or a professor, but you were there presenting your work!!
And… perusing through your posts, yes, I would say your blog is more academic than most. You relate your art to the thought behind it many times throughout your writing. To me, that’s a scholarly or academic approach vs. an “i like pretty fabric” approach.
Anyhow…. that clears up the mysteries for me, as I was sure I’d reached out to ask you to be at the MQG mtg in Berkeley, and then when you arrived and we couldn’t connect the dots on the CCA and the word “academic,” I got confused!!!
My words just weren’t working for me that night!
So glad you came, and I hope you come again (and bring stuff to show us), even though your commute can be a little crazy!
cyn
Great post – the class sounds so fascinating. I think for me studying art therapy instead of doing an MFA marked the conscious shift from intellectual to embodied experience. I still worked with the same processes and materials, but felt more whole, playful and connected to what I was doing. And I think that part of that was that I wasn’t so focused on the end product. I learned to appreciate the experience of making, the patient gentle repetition of movements, as something healing and restorative for myself.
Amazing topic. I learned this concept of the ‘muscle memory’ when I was studying ballet, but I never thought of applying it to my craft making.
You are right, of course. I learn through other people’s advise, through the net, you tube, etc. but nothing equals the direct experience and the repetition of movement.
Trim here, have a look there, feel: when I do all this and do it again, I do not have to think about the steps I have to take, all come as a second nature in the process of creativity.
Wow! I have actually been thinking about this topic a lot and for a long time. I believe that I learn things through my hands, ears, eyes and feet every day. Through making art I have learned to listen with my hands, see with my ears, smell with my eyes — you get the picture. I think the act of making gives you a much deeper sense of your body and its connection to the world. You have a heightened sense of everything — especially nuance/s. I also believe that different types of art making causes you to experience and therefor know your body/ yourself in different ways. I am much more aware of my body’s involvement when I am making prints. I haven’t really stopped to really think about it but I do know that it is a different feeling than what I experience when I make quilts or sculpt dolls. I love thinking about this kind of stuff. Thanks for sparking the conversation!