This summer, I participated in a workshop at the Brooklyn Museum entitled ‘Abstraction from Nature’. The workshop encouraged us to engage with two current exhibitions, Swoon’s ‘Submerged Motherlands’ and Judy Chicago’s Early Works. We also went to the Brooklyn Botanical garden for a painting session.

The workshop extended over 8 weeks in July and August 2014 and we met Saturday afternoons for 2 hours. This was the first time I participated in an art making class since starting my studies with OCA. I very much enjoyed being part of a group, looking at other’s works and having a real person instructor who provided immediate feedback and help when we got stuck. Important was not only the individual feedback, but also listening to feedback others received and also the interactions among participants. I became aware what I was missing as a solitary student in distance education, which was not sufficiently compensated for through online interaction and written tutor feedback on assignments.

That said, I highly appreciate the possibility to study via distance education, but I more and more realize that I need to complement this with real-world interaction.

Starting out: Swoon’s ‘Submerged Motherlands’

In the first session, we went to the exhibition with the instruction to take some time for looking and then draw some elements with recognizable shapes from the installation. The task was not easy because of the sheer dimension of the installation. The photos can hardly convey how huge it was – the people on the lower left of the photo give an indication.

Students chose a wide variety of subjects. I opted for “easy shapes”, taking the instructions literally, whereas others ventured to draw sections of the huge tree or the upper lace-like parts of this monumental sculpture.

Later back in the studio we were supposed to work over the drawings using ink washes that should include different tonal values. We were told to cut these shapes out and later mount them on cardboard to include them in a three-dimensional group work, but this idea wasn’t actually followed up and so this session just served as a warm-up.

    

Painting from nature

In the next session, we went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which is just around the corner of the museum. Equipped with watercolours, we were advised to walk around a bit and then sketch out a landscape view we liked. As a second step, we should develop it further as a watercolour painting.

I painted a scene that included some stone benches and a view towards a pathway and some trees. I liked how the sunlight came through the trees and illuminated them. I also made a photograph of the scene, but the painting was made directly on location.

   

Developing the abstraction idea

The instructor’s ideas for our workshop became somewhat clearer to me when he outlined them again. He wanted us to develop something that extended from the original painting space into all directions, thus creating a three-dimensional work. His suggestion was to take shapes from our painting and repeat these as simplified forms, cut them out, mount them on cardboard and then compose a layered, three-dimensional image.

The next several sessions were devoted to working this out. Initially, it was all very vague to make sense of this abstract instruction, but then the idea took off in participants’ minds and we mutually inspired us to interesting creations.

I worked on shapes to complete the elements that had been cropped at the edges of the original painting: A large and a smaller tree, a fence, a bush, and three stone benches. The painting itself was mounted on a large black cardboard. Another cardboard was attached at the bottom in a 90° angl to provide support for a construction to attach the mounted shapes.

This was the arrangement I wanted to retain. The next step was to build the backside construction to keep the shapes at different distances from the background.

Judy Chicago – Early works

Towards the end of the workshop, we all went to the Judy Chicago exhibition, showing some of her early works. This was a very irritating experience for me, probably because I had never before studied an overtly “feminist” artist or works from the late sixties/early seventies feminist movement.

I had real difficulty relating to the works, finding them cold and polished. Somehow they were emotionally inaccessible to me. My attitude changed while I wandered through the second exhibition room and took a closer look at the “Female rejection drawing #3” (1974) with its handwritten notes below. The notes thematized Judy Chicago’s image of self and her experiences with others – her fears of rejection in close relationships and the difficulty of coming out as a lesbian woman in a feminist context. From then on her drawings and sculptures began to make sense to me as expressions of her personality. But a strange gut feeling remained and I was not able to like her works.

It is also difficutl to say in what ways might have an impact on subsequent work for the workshop or OCA courswork. I do remember that I was impressed by the psychological effect the exhibition visit had on me – it felt like stomach turned upside down and I needed some time to get back to normal.

Completing the installations

The remainder of the workshop sessions was devoted to finalizing our constructions. The shapes were attached using cardboard as distance holders and with several layers at different distances there was quite some fiddling with the cardboard and glue until the whole thing became sufficiently sturdy.

Zen Browne, our instructor, began attaching the finished works onto a wall for us to look at and the more that were added, the more we became impressed with what we as a group had accomplished. Starting out with a vague idea, the resulting installation was colourful and every work was different and particular.

  

In the final session, we could either make last touches on the work or make a painting inspired by it. I made a watercolour painting that took up the visual effect of the black cardboard background and the shapes that extended beyond it.

Overall, I think the workshop was an enormous enrichment. I loved how it was ‘un-academic’ in approach, just designed to have fun and enjoy ourselves while doing something creative. I felt that I loosened up in my application of watercolours and got more confident to try out new things and follow up ideas. It encouraged me to add real-life events and meeding people to my practice of art making. It is all a bit difficult when working full-time, but I think the benefits absolutely outweigh the additional investment in fees and time.

Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum

I was thrilled about the announcement that our works would be included in the museum’s Educational Department exhibition, starting in September 2014 and staying on display until around January 2015. I went to the exhibition opening and was approached by one of the staff members to explain the workshop’s idea to one of the visitors, a young girl. That was about the first time that I was questioned in person about some artwork I had done, an interesting experience!

  

Resources

Swoon exhibition pictures from http://www.clawclaw.com/2014/08/swooning-over-swoons-submerged-motherlands/ and http://www.life-creative-collective.co.uk/swoon/

Brooklyn museum, educational program: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/education/

Swoon Exhibition, Brooklyn Museum: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/swoon/

Judy Chicago exhibition: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/judy_chicago_los_angeles/