Drawing and other inquiries on landscape (WAS)
(Second part to "Drawing" the landscape) The landscape at WAS for the field trip drawing on the ideas of constellations and nodes from Gaston Gordillo’s Rubble - An Afterlife of Destruction. There are various landscape “nodes” of rubble at WAS that are on the site map. 1) Field Chapel (2010) 2) Holliwell School (1850s) 3) Foundation and well (after 1848) 4) Middle River (before 1848) 5) Native path (before 1848) 6) Prairie (before 1848, and 2013) 7) Forest (before 1848) 8) John Wilkinson homestead (1848)
Gordillo’s investigations led him to transform his concept of ruins into one of and instead “to explore rubble as textured, affectively charged matter that is intrinsic to all living places.” This began with a deeply felt reaction that were “profoundly bodily and affective” and he plunged into exploring “the sensory multiplicity of rubble.” The rubble at WAS is to varying degrees invisible to our dominate way of conceptualizing the landscape. They are tucked behind the “ruin” of the Holliwell Covered Bridge that has not become “tamed” and made part of our “heritage” (Scenic Byway). In the bridge and byways we have what Walter Benjamin referred to as the positivistic "bourgeois dream-world." And at WAS we might find what Theodor Adorno called “the logic of disintegration.”
It is important to engage in the space among the rubble to help see them in the larger constellation of rubble that exists along the way. You drawing process will be a bodily engagement in helping to understand the conditions, forces, tensions, and histories of inhabiting the landscape. Our representation (exploratory spatial/sensory thinking ) of the landscape in the prologue exercise will be extended further at WAS.
Vyankatesh Chinchalkar. "Drawing" the landscape
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Vyankatesh Chinchalkar. "Drawing" the landscape
"V" working in collaboration with Yee Teoh created a nuanced study of landscape in his series based on the spirit or "soul" of the tree. The recognition that each tree is an unique individual rather than merely a kind (species) is imbued in the drawings. The "drawings" by transferring the image of the tree to paper are a kind of monotype rather than a conventional drawing.
The environmental history of the land from local to global conditions is responded to by the tree. For the selected trees there is a lengthy history that predates our own exist but also may predate the times in which European settlers arrived at WAS beginning a period of transformation. The trees are witness to a culture that had a very different understanding of the land. The felt loss of native ecology is also layered in the series of drawings that show the tree fading away to absence. (K.L.)
"V" working in collaboration with Yee Teoh created a nuanced study of landscape in his series based on the spirit or "soul" of the tree. The recognition that each tree is an unique individual rather than merely a kind (species) is imbued in the drawings. The "drawings" by transferring the image of the tree to paper are a kind of monotype rather than a conventional drawing.
The environmental history of the land from local to global conditions is responded to by the tree. For the selected trees there is a lengthy history that predates our own exist but also may predate the times in which European settlers arrived at WAS beginning a period of transformation. The trees are witness to a culture that had a very different understanding of the land. The felt loss of native ecology is also layered in the series of drawings that show the tree fading away to absence. (K.L.)
Cassie Fraiser. Silver Maple grove along the Middle River
Site visit 10/15/18 - Two student paths along the forest and to the John Wilkinson homestead location. Total of 4.69km over 1 hr and 47 mins.
Mia Tiric and Sarah Cobb, "Drawing" the landscape
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Sarah Cobb
I continued to experiment with alcohol inks and developed techniques that involved blowing with a straw, mixing with a wet canvas, and leaf-pressing. The landscape at Westbrook inspired more qualities of texture in my work through the observation of rubble. The harshness of leftover barbed wire, the roughness of a fallen log, and the eternity of a flowing river were considered. Working up-close and personal with the individual elements of nature and the impact that humans have upon it helped lead me to a cohesive abstraction of landscape. - Sarah Cobb
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