I did my best to scout the neighborhood when I was sixteen, finding a quick route versus a scenic one. I dream often of the downhill slope from my childhood house. I moved thirty miles north a few years later, and had to approach the same city from a different perspective. I fought to keep my old routes, though it would take me twice as long to get anywhere in my old neighborhood. Months passed, and I finally began venturing. I asked the map for directions. I took the highway through the middle of the city, and not the one that cradles.
arts based research
Over Here Thinking About Over There (reprise)
I bought a new book as a reward for purchasing materials and tools for my workshop last month. It sat in my bookbag for over three weeks until I cracked it open yesterday afternoon. Two and a half articles deep, and this anthology suggests that the next tangible leap for art-as-research is within the realm of art therapy. The linear quality of such thinking makes me wonder if anything has changed since the book’s 2013 publication date. I spend another ten minutes looking at the same fifteen schools that offer PhD programs for studio practice.
Earlier that morning, I moved my loom aside and cleared a space on the wall for another magazine collage project. I took a National Geographic, tore off the first page and slathered smaller bites all over the canvas. I made it halfway through that page when I met a new visual research project. Quick, three thoughts -
What happens when the linear form of previewing time is flattened into the same plane of reference.
A simple collage project using a single magazine turns into an entire research enquiry on time travel…
A stop motion video of each page used in chronology! A time lapse of the overall picture field changing!
And a final, fourth thought: what does it mean to catalog the spaces in between?