5 senses workshop Touch

Touch was both the first and the last of the 5 senses workshops with the Naked Eye drawing group and produced some really lovely work. (I ran a Touch workshop last year as a space filler for Jo Kori with her Naked Eye drawing group who meet every fortnight at the The Beacon, Hastings. 

We handled various objects brought in and described them to each other to practice articulating the feel and sensation of what we were holding without looking at the objects. 

This was later translated into marks, so for example surfaces described as furrows, edges, thin lines, rough patches, heaviness, holes and indentations were then created by mark with materials including plaster on board and charcoal. Another exercise was pure contour drawing and drawing from touching the profile of the face without looking.

I've been really grateful for the opportunity to run these workshops in experimental mark making using the 5 senses as a point of departure. It's  been a learning curve for me to test them out. My thanks go to the very committed Naked Eye drawing group for asking me in the first place and throwing themselves into them! 

touching circles 

Contour drawing 

working into plaster on board 

tryptic of frotage ash and found material

lovely sketch book work 

profile by touch and contour drawing

inverted profile and contour drawing 

Touching forms 

detail of tryptic 

5 senses workshop SMELL

Smell 

This workshop was a fantastic feast of memories, associations and stories all tumbling out. Identifying moments in our childhood, rights of passage and first perfumes. A rich tapestry of stories of relationships, of when and when perfumes were bought and used ranging from Yves St Laurant, Poison, Chanel no 19 to Jo Malone and the smell of fresh cut grass. 

Miriam was practising losing herself in process and produced some lovely experimental work. 

I tried to keep up with doing some work myself but with so much reminiscing and memories emerging instead we enjoyed a really open and varied discussion including Wolfgang Laib's pollen fields, Anish Kapoor's wax train in the Royal Academy, dead foxes and lemon scented cleaning fluids.... 




Anish Kapoor's Wax train  and Wolfgang Laib's pollen from hazelnut. see the link below to watch his video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-_92MYcANk 

What was really pleasing and motivating was the connections that students were making through articulating their memories and how this was inspiring confidence and the desire to apply these new thoughts and feelings to ongoing work. We all left the morning buzzing about setting new projects in place. I found myself really encouraging students to begin to set themselves their own chosen parameters to work within and to create a body of work following on from these experimental workshops. 



cloves



soap

5 Senses art worskhop TASTE

This week we were looking at Taste and how it might influence or enhance approaching our art work and creative process. 

Taste is of course very subjective and food has been used in art both in direct and indirect ways. We referred to Anthony Gormley and his bread sculptures, Claus Oldenburg for his pop art floor cake, burger and other food items and several artists who have looked to food as subject matter for still life - in this brief exploration of the sense of taste I was hoping to highlight some of the subtleties and associations of this sense. 

First we did a warm up in pairs identifying something small that our partner had changed in their appearance this encouraged students to take time to think and look ....this exercise is useful done several times over until you think you have run out of choices...it can help to break through blocks and push you beyond your usual thought pattern. We all notice things to a degree and then switch off relying on our memory or habit of simply sticking to what we know. To break out of this opens up new pathways which is especially helpful when trying to make art that remains interesting and challenging.   

After this we looked at a diagram of the tongue and its taste receptor areas of sweet, salty, sour and bitter including umami - a pleasant savory taste (from the Japanese) .

To get immediate experience and wake up our taste buds we tasted some large caperberries, green chili peppers and slices of lemon. Then discussed each of our experiences which rapidly led to stories of associations and childhood memories of food. 

Focussing the mind onto creating something visual and consolidating our previous discussion and experience we drew some aubergines - just straight aubergines whole or cut open. 

Cheryl with felt/sewn aubergine

Carol's lovely bold bagel with fish, aubergine arrangements and chocolate slab squares

Sadly I missed photographing Miriam's wax resist and water colour aubergines. 

These senses workshops are intellectually demanding as they involve a lot of thinking and application - however there are ways of bringing us back to the subject if we are struggling (and we can do this in our own time too to bring us back to our work if we are getting stuck) An easy on for TASTE at coffee time it was cupcake blind tasting.

Identical mini cakes made in 6 flavours; rose, orange, lemon, peppermint, cola, and strawberry. This was harder than I anticipated for two reasons 1) some people were not sweet toothed and found the sweetness too overpowering and 2) it's difficult when there are no visual clues to search your memory for identification of a taste....we were literally closing our eyes and delving deep into our minds to recall the time when we had tasted something similar. 

 Students created work around a food item they had brought in that held some significance for them. 

Miriam's 'real' bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon 

David's bread relief 

Cheryl's final autobiographical piece 

Aubergine with Bagel and tinned Nappolina Tomatoes.