Drawing/Errors

For the next nine months, I'm teaching drawing. Drawing with a little color theory and basic painting thrown in. Back to basics, which, considering I began art school in 1995 (almost twenty years ago!) is waaaay back for me.

It's wonderful. I have a group of students who all want to be there. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy convincing teaching students who don't like art, don't think they are good at it, don't want to be there, turning them onto art as something enjoyable, expressive, necessary. But it is nice change to have students who want to dive in fully. Yesterday, a student pulled out a drawing she did on the first day, and the drawing she had done that morning - and was astounded by home much she had grown in just four full days of work.

I'm getting to draw too. Actually, considering how so much of my drawing in the past few years has been purpose-driven - for a print, for a project - I was a little nervous at first. It's been a while since I've had time to just draw for no intention but drawing. And at first, I kept remembering some of my teachers who liked to show off, to show how "good" they were, how "perfectly" they could draw, how much cred they had.

And then I remembered teachers who taught the technical skills, but also made sure to teach the gestalt, the passion, the magic of drawing. One distinct memory is of being in a life drawing class with the professor linked above, and being shown sketches by Pontormo in which he had erased and redrew figures, adjusting them till everything felt complete. And I thought about this in comparison to the teachers who showed off.

The teachers who showed me the mistakes taught me to see drawing as a journey, an adventure, an experience that enabled growth and insight.

I'm also familiar with the story that many art school survivors tell - that the study of art can drain the passion for it. This happens for many reasons - sometimes for teachers who are closeminded or threatened by the questions and new ideas that students present, that feel that Art fits a certain definition that a student doesn't fill. Sometimes its because a student encounters the rigor, demands and sacrifices of what the academic study of art requires and chooses a different path. So a midst teaching a technical grounding, I'm simultaneously trying to build gestalt, passion and awareness of their own growth.

For instance, I remember in Basic Drawing with Frida Fehrenbacher, spending two extremely focused hours drawing cross contours of objects. When we had about forty minutes left of our three hour class, she told us to put these drawings away and to take out a new piece of paper. And then she engaged us in scribbling, erasing, and loosening up. I remember how energizing the experience was, gifting us with a balance and also insight into drawing as a place. The memory of this moment has stayed with me; and it is something I incorporate into my teaching now.

Next week, I'm taking my students to the Cantor. By taking them there, of course I want them to be inspired and to develop understanding of some great works of art. But I also want them to understand that by choosing to study art, these works are their inheritance. Not just theirs, of course, really all humanity (which is why they belong in museums, particularly museums with free admission like the Cantor). More than that, I want them to consider that by choosing to be an artist, a person says that yes, sometimes the world sucks, but they believe that that is not the default model of humanity. That by learning to draw, they are embarking on a path to making the world better.

Shifting Margins at Red Poppy

Some readers of this blog may not be aware that I am the art instructor for Southern Exposure's partnership with The Beat Within. In this program, I visit the Alameda County Juvenile Hall once a week to teach art and writing workshops.

Recently, some work by my students there was selected for the exhibition, Shifting Margins, curated and organized by OFFSpace. OFFSpace is the brainchild of Kathrine Worel and Emmanuelle Namont Kouznetsov. The exhibition is running in two parts, my students' work is on display at Red Poppy Art House.

Due to the complications and unpredictability that youth in juvenile detention experience, it was decided to exhibit digital reproductions of their artwork, rather than originals. This way, if they were released, sent to a group home, aged out of juvenile detention, or something else, their drawings would not be lost to them.

The work is up till November 10.

Michelle in Comix!

Click on the comic for a larger image.

The Artist As Storyteller came down last week, but the catalog for the exhibition lives on! Curator Alison Frost did a comic about each artist, in my case, incorporating text from this very blog.

Each artist was given several pages to create something unique for the catalog. You can see the series of drawings I did here.

The Compound Gallery still has catalogs for sale - visit here to get your copy.

"Voyage," a suite of drawings

Allison Frost, curator of the exhibition I'm a part of at the Compound Gallery, decided to take a different approach to the catalog that accompanies the show. Instead of just reproducing the work from the show, each artist was given a few pages to make art specifically for them. She also contributed some comics based on each artist - which were AMAZING, and I'll have a post on that later.

Below are the drawings I did for the catalog. It's a visual narrative of some images that were running through my mind, incorporating some handmade papers I had lying around that seemed perfect for this series.

I'll note here, I was doing these drawings around the time Maurice Sendak died, and the dog in the laundry image is a nod to Jennie, the dog in Higglety Pigglety Pop. In her travels, she came for a brief visit to this narrative, though prior to these drawings that was never recorded.

The Compound Gallery still has copies of the catalog for sale. To purchase, please contact them.

Sexuality and Ownership in Art and on the Street

I dug back into my 'ole digital archives today to find these images. They're from a body of work I did years ago, that I thought of under the unsubtle title as the Egg series. They're from my early twenties, when I was exploring the multiplicity of emotions and ideas that come from being a sexual being. For some reason during that period of my life, eggs, with their hard shell and chaotic fluid inside, seemed to embody all the confusion and emotion I was experiencing.

As a woman, my sexuality and safety have always been linked. Rebecca Solnit said it best when she said that in order to be safe, women have to choose to limit their freedoms - what to wear, where to go, with whom, and when, and so forth. But lately I've been thinking about how sexuality and issues of power and powerlessness are also linked. This has come about from many discussions in the media currently, from the New York Post's headline that blamed Dominique Strauss-Kahn's victim for her rape, to Philaelphia's Dan Rottenberg in the Broad Street Review's article "Male Sex Abuse and Female Naviete," which he blames the way women such as Lara Logan dress for their rapes, to Jezebel's discussion of catcalls, to organizations like Hollaback and Slutwalk, to my own current experiences with street harassment.

The image above is a print I did called Armless, based on the faery tale of "The Armless Maiden." It wasn't part of the Egg series, but it was related in concept.I was thinking about my own powerlessness as a woman, and how sometimes my own sexuality could feel like a threat. I realize now I was blaming myself for not feeling safe in my own skin when on the street.

Part of me has been thinking about how so many efforts lately to end street harassment are reactionary, and wonders if is there a proactive solution? I also can't help wondering - who teaches men to catcall and bother strange women they don't know? Is that what the boys learned in fourth grade when we had to watch the video about our periods? Do fathers sit down with sons and have this discussion?

I'm currently teaching in a juvenile hall, with youth who are segregated by gender. For the boys, at least, it has created what feels like a hypersexualized environment, where I'm asked every week I go there about my personal relationships, and despite dressing rather conservatively, still find some youth not-so-subtly checking out my ass. I think at times it's meant as a compliment, other times because they haven't had the experience of relating to women in any other way. I should note here that I don't know if gender desegregation is the answer, and that it might also put some incarcerated young women at risk.

But I'm also starting to wonder how much of it is about power. By ogling me and other women, by making comments, how much is about asserting power over women, particular women who are perceived as sexually attractive. I'm proud of discussions lately about how women who own their sexuality, those who dress provocatively because it makes them feel good about themselves, rather than to attract a man. As I struggle with owning my own sexual identity, and every catcall chips away at my fragile ownership. It's a threat because its about claiming me, claiming women, still as property.