New Breath for a growing body of work

The Six Viewpoints and Sculpture.....SHAPE & STORY Class 2/3 at the PHCA

The day was warm and sunny. I was able to find a way to recycle all the topsoil I'd acquired for last weeks class. I feel like I am having an honest dialogue with the Viewpoints again. They demand it. I have been researching and meditating on the work being so rooted in the environment and the landscape. Mary Overlie says, "You find yourself through your surroundings, or you don't find yourself at all."

I wanted today to really be about not being denial of anything in your immediate surroundings and to focus intently on observing the subtle qualities of everything that already exists.

I also wanted to try exploring two Viewpoints with the same sculptural materials, but at different times in the class so as to keep the focus on isolated individual perceptual abilities.

SHAPE - perceptual ability to see and feel physical boundaries

observing and participating with Shape;

visualize the mechanics of following a kinesthetic impulse

execute

excavating the plaster from last classes TIME exercise total tactile and sensual discovery


physical boundary of the dirt

physical boundary of the hands

physical boundary of the ground

the shape will inform you where to go next

investigating a logic system non-verbally in groups
sharing the research with each other
using the dirt and the body

All Photos by Tom Murray

When the work, research, and meditations come from diving into the unknown, there is a
reciprocal relationship between the participants and I. A give and take between the work and my body. I can feel the difference between last class and today's and it is good.

I gave each participant time at the end of class to journal about the vocabulary and tools they learned from class and how they could use it in there own work. This is a fundamental quality of this research. It is non-product based and as such, the practice simply opens new pathways for entering your own challenges and visions in life.

The longer and more dedicated the participate stays with each individual Viewpoint, the more free and innovative their structure for their own processes in their life will be.

The next class is the last of the series. I will be sad to see this project end to quickly. It has been fast and furious.

A Crucial Turning Point

The Six Viewpoints and Sculpture....EMOTION & TIME Class 1/3 at the Packing House Center for Arts

I am struggling to locate the nature of this work in an urban setting. It is drastically differant from the project I was able to lead in Durango and Hesperus, Colorado. The earth is coated thickly with pollution everywhere. The air feels uninspiring. I will have to work indoors today. I feel turbulent about all this.

The following are photographs and comments on the Class 1 research:
Deconstructing, Isolating, and developing an acute awareness for two Individual Viewpoints:

EMOTION - perceptual ability to experience states of being

observing and participating with the natural state of being

automatic writing

blindfolded

lead through a body scan- yoga nidra

charcoal drawing of the body

titled by a gem from writing

reflection

TIME - perceptual ability to experience duration and systems created to regulate duration

observing and participating with duration


burying parts of the body

meditating on duration
filling the void where the body was with plaster
letting the plaster exist with the dirt for an extended duration (7 days)

All Photos by Tom Murray

I learned a GREAT deal from this first workshop. I realized that one of the most important aspects of this process is the exploration of the unknown and taking risk. In this first class I was leading exercises and having participants work with sculptural material in ways I had already done during a previous project.

Although those participating may have gotten something out of the class, I was not excited by it. It was dull for me because I was just repeating and reproducing something I had already discovered, I had expectations for it now.

Therefore, the work needs to be constantly evolving and persistently pushing out of the reified world into the unknown. The work and I are not engaged with one another if there is no risk. I am so captivated with this discovery. There will never be a class or workshop that was like the last. It will always be different. Stemming from the body by attuning the awareness to isolated Viewpoints will remain the core, but it now has the freedom to jump farther and farther off the cliff.

I am excited to come back to the next class.

The Packing House Center for Arts

The Six Viewpoints and Sculpture Process continues...

I will soon be leaving for New York. It was important to me that I be able to exercise the tools and vocabulary of this process I am developing before I leave. The work does not continue to grow and thrive on paper or in my head, it must be articulated and demonstrated with live bodies.


I decided to really challenge myself to conduct a very brief class series on The Six Viewpoints and Sculpture Process. It is in high contrast to the last project where I had atleast 4 hours to dedicate to one individual Viewpoint. Whereas with this series, I was only able to propose 3 Classes to cover all Six Viewpoints...which is roughly 2 hrs/2 Viewpoints; a nearly impossible task.

This work is mainly documented through photography because of it's performative nature making it an ephemeral form. Also, the process is not formulated to produce a marketable product. It is simply a way for anyone participating to celebrate in the process and open new avenues or break down creative blocks to support their own work. The complex and beautiful theory behind this method demands a practice for working with individual Viewpoints in isolation to allow a more fluid, flexible and dynamic structure to inform how we perceive our life and our art (work).

(photo by Tom Murray, Outside The Packing House Center for Arts)