Well its been an incredible spring and its turning out to be an even more wonderfully juicy summer. Happy to say that the Spring semester and final reviews on the Mountain (Mount Royal School of Art) kicked my tail and taught me so much. My fellow Mounties are definitely one of a kind and it's great to be sharing creative space and expressive time with these folks.
Figuring my way through the semester is definitely something I won't forget - and I do think the occurrence of me stepping outside my comfort zone and working in unexpected creative contexts helped me with navigating my way expressively. Speaking of navigation, I decided to take a performance and costume class - The Expanded Body with an incredible Baltimore based fiber and performance artist Melissa Webb. This exposed me to so much history, fiber, culture and performance context. In addition to learning how to walk on stilts (yes - I said and did just that), I was so happy to have one of those universal artist "aha moments" when it came to the building of wearable structures part of the class - especially with such flexible mediums like reed and bamboo. In regards to the topic of navigation, I had been looking to see how my newly acknowledged alter ego, Pirate Jenny could get around. Ideas of navigation - all in the realm of sea navigation instruments, time traveling, movement and mapping began to take shape.
This was definitely a perfect place for me to link those ideas into the previous context of pirates and run away slaves interacting, as well as examining the social choreography and anarchist themes that came from such a collusive existence in the context of social governance within outcast communities. Also, I'd never mapped out my alter ego before, even with the many mediums of drawing and fabric it was great to see where I could take PJ creatively, conceptually and realistically. I know she's definitely an anarchist - but I'm not sure entirely where she'll take me either.
Figuring my way through the semester is definitely something I won't forget - and I do think the occurrence of me stepping outside my comfort zone and working in unexpected creative contexts helped me with navigating my way expressively. Speaking of navigation, I decided to take a performance and costume class - The Expanded Body with an incredible Baltimore based fiber and performance artist Melissa Webb. This exposed me to so much history, fiber, culture and performance context. In addition to learning how to walk on stilts (yes - I said and did just that), I was so happy to have one of those universal artist "aha moments" when it came to the building of wearable structures part of the class - especially with such flexible mediums like reed and bamboo. In regards to the topic of navigation, I had been looking to see how my newly acknowledged alter ego, Pirate Jenny could get around. Ideas of navigation - all in the realm of sea navigation instruments, time traveling, movement and mapping began to take shape.
This was definitely a perfect place for me to link those ideas into the previous context of pirates and run away slaves interacting, as well as examining the social choreography and anarchist themes that came from such a collusive existence in the context of social governance within outcast communities. Also, I'd never mapped out my alter ego before, even with the many mediums of drawing and fabric it was great to see where I could take PJ creatively, conceptually and realistically. I know she's definitely an anarchist - but I'm not sure entirely where she'll take me either.
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