Performance 2010

“A window until the rains come” albb Open Studio

A project by a little blah blah. Vietnam.

The Open Studio was exhilarating; a time of sharing my work and using the time, space, and my visitors as an opportunity to experiment with my energy drawings. The guests would look with amazement at my strange objects (the beginnings of the “drawing armour”), which had pencils.

and bits of charcoal protruding from them. They always asked what the objects were, and I would tell them that the items were meant to be worn on different parts of their body, arms legs etc. I described that idea was for the wearers to feel their way round the page on the wall rather than using the usual eye hand coordination and for them to draw with other less comfortable, more purely energetic parts of their bodies.

In use, as each participant drew with the unconventional tools affixed to awkward parts of their bodies, each drawing exercise became a mini performance, especially when one guest - an expert in judo - agreed to do a whole wall drawing. kitted her up with the drawing armour and then, almost instinctively, she moved with grace and force along the wall, marking the energy of her moves with the charcoal. The drawing recorded the energy and force of the sequence she performed, including a couple kicks that resulted rips.