|
Josh
Hogeland eyes his abstract painting critically, decides it is
good.
“You get
to make up your own design," says the 11-year-old, "and
just go crazy."
And that's
precisely the point, Alicia Mannix says. An artist who says she
struggled with her own fear of the blank canvas for 25 years,
Mannix now teaches a technique she calls Doodlism. She says it
stands in the same relation to theory-based art that jazz improvisation
has to a classical music performance.
"You
put yourself in the space of being 5 years old," Mannix says.
Maybe that's
the reason it seems almost easier for the 11 kids ages 3 to 12
in Mannix's art class Saturday at Nuwandart, an Ashland gallery,
than for some adult art students.
"Training
can, be restrictive Mannix says. "It Can make people think
there's a limited number of ways of doing things."
The Doodlist
painting/collage works created by Walker School fourth-graders
lining a wall here testify. to the method's vitality. Each brought
in a baby picture and a current picture of himself, and created
a painting/collage/self-portrait, Doodlism students start by putting
paint on Canvas with any instinctive gesture, anything at all.
It's OK to drip paint throw paint smear it around with brushes,
sticks, whatever.
Javier Banda,
6, had no trouble creating a colorful design he says started out
to be a flag and took on a life of its own.
"I'm
going to do another one, too," he says.
I Noah Kileen,
9, says the best part is that "you get to smear all the colors
around."
Other kids
drizzle and drip paint Jackson Pollock‑style, onto canvases,
paper, the floor, their shoes and in many cages themselves.
Underneath
the mayhem, there's message, Mannix says. There are situations
we can control, and things beyond our master.
"You
create this chaos," she says. "And then you may notice
an emerging shape. You introduce some order, make some aesthetic
decisions."
She compares
the process to the Big Bang with which physicists think the universe
began.
She also compares
it to giving birth ‑a moment in which the artist is not
a ‑conscious doer but almost a kind of channel for something
ultimately mysterious.
"It's
a combination Of chaos and order," she says. "Which
is pretty much what life is."
There's only
one drawback, Josh Hogeland says, eyeing his painty shoes: "This
is gonna stick to my skateboard."
|
