Exercise facilitates to develop and strengthen; it is beneficial in building of muscle mass and creative fodder.
Creative exercises can expand and help explore various paths of thoughts and ideas that are not currently on the surface. When I am in the studio I put my blinders on so I can focus on what I am currently doing… and not over in the corner alphabetizing my paints or some other task that seems more interesting in the moment.
Below is an example of one of these exercises from Wednesday afternoon. The first part was cutting strips of paper and weaving them together, exploring how things fit together and even though they are the same length and the the same size each one is a little different, depending on the placement and whether the penciled lines are visible. This allowed me opportunities to experiment and see how things fit together (and how they don’t).
The second part was asking partner, Pablo, to provide a single word for me to explore the concepts connected to that word. In this case the word was LEAF. In each square section of the woven paper I created a small ink drawing of an object that in some manner relates to the word ‘Leaf’. Currently there are a total of 90 drawings.
This is just one simple start, but a wonderful way to come up with ideas that I might not have thought of otherwise, some of the connections are literal, some conceptual and others are completely random. Connected together it created an exercise filled with potential creative fodder.
