I had a tutorial with our temporary course leader – Robin – on a two week visit.
Robin probed me on whether I am interested in the meaning of the words I’m using or the form – it’s the form of writing broken down, rather than their meaning. The piece I am doing on the wall at college ‘unneutral’ – I have tried to force meaning into by writing the names of people I know and cutting those up. This doesn’t have any effect on the piece or me. It is still broken up words. Cutting the names up doesn’t stop me knowing the names, it hinders others from reading it. I’m not interested in that – what is exciting to me is what new meaning the forms might take on, but more that I might find something in the process. Once back working with unneutral I started to glue the writing in loops, coming away from the surface as the flat surface was really dull.
Last night I was playing with the forms of handwriting in small macquette 3D forms, prompted by items I found around my house and garden.
I was also writing more material to work with. As I’d decided that the content of the writing didn’t matter I started copying out a page of dictionary, but this was mind-numbing and I soon began stream of consiousness /free writing which flowed much better than any copying. I’ve been copying Shakespeare and repeating phrases recently. Breaking up a short phrase helped to limit the material I was working with, and I varied the size I worked on, but with the same size and amount of writing – varying the space available helped me to push the form around in playful ways. Again I find that having a limit / s aids creativity.
