You will need:
Your body
Your attention
Today, pay attention to the paths you make in space. Imagine that your feet create a line behind you. What is the shape you create over the course of your day?
This assignment is based on a performance activity I did with my graphic design students in which the students would form a line. Each student would take turns leading the others throughout campus, while they drew in their sketchbooks the resulting line they created. (Delightfully chaotic results, much giggling). That assignment was based on the title of an amazing art assignment book called “Taking a Line for a Walk”, published by Spector Books. The title of that book was based on this quote by artist Paul Klee: “An active line on a walk, moving freely, without a goal. A walk for a walk’s sake.”
I think it’s interesting to approach this assignment from a variety of perspectives. What are the lines you create by simply moving through your day as you would any other? (and without judgment) Many folks have taken the opposite approach with apps like Strava, purposefully moving through real space to create digital images. It’s easy to move from there to thoughts of surveillance and the quiet constant of location data tracking. And then, while running errands in my neighborhood yesterday, I considered how my lines might cross the lines of others, which reminded me of Hallie Bateman’s eternally relevant artwork. And I thought about how the architecture of our world creates a framework for movement; in my neighborhood, walking is a very gridded experience. In my home, my patterns of movement are spiraling. What of a walk in an open field? And of course, Paul Klee’s remark is about drawing as walking rather than the other way around. Flip, flop.
Coming Up:
My work at Fresh Eye Gallery’s Yulemart. Opening tomorrow (Nov. 16), reception Friday (Nov. 17, 6–8pm), closing December 23. The last of my Water T-Shirts, Frog T-Shirts, and a smattering of WOW Greeting Card Packs will be available until they run out.
Studio Sale, Date TBD (but soon), online. In an effort to clear out some of my flat files and fund some time off around the holidays, I’ll be posting original artwork online for sale within the coming weeks. A great opportunity to buy affordable original art as gifts for yourself or others this season! Expect snails, landscapes, some birds, and some humans. Paid subscribers will get early access :-)
Personal Work, a group show curated by Alison Nowak on view at the James Wegner Art Gallery in Austin, MN (home of the SPAM Museum, too!). I have a very tiny piece in the exhibition alongside amazing works by other Minnesota-based illustrators like Kelsey King, who is showing the 421 landscape paintings she made daily during the pandemic (!!)