By Chanel WebsterChanel is a visual artist who is blogging for The Body Project about her experience investigating her drawn humor: PHLEGM. She's previously worked with Storyhound Theatre on The Greensboro Grapevine, and her new piece will be exhibited at The Greensboro Project Space on March 2 as part of First Friday. A Greensboro N.C. native, I am a predominantly a self taught visual artist mostly known for acrylic collage paintings with a red background. Creative inspiration for me begins with a vision inspired by the emotion of everyday life. My creative goal as a visual artist is to create emotion through simplicity with line and color through paintings, sketches and photography.
My Experience at the Phlegm Table ... Walking into the room (at the Greensboro Project Space) on our first night of The Body Project, I had no idea of what to expect. First thing I noticed: there are four tables each with a lemon, a head of lettuce, an eggplant, a box of noodles and an onion. I'm trying to figure out how in the world is this related to the body experiment. I was smiling on the outside but on the inside I was so confused. We all stood around and waited to learn our destiny. Each person was asked to pull a piece of paper which would decide which humor we would work with. Some of us pulled the paper and started reading over it and then slowly pulling out our cell phones for more information like cramming for an exam. Next, we were asked to stand at a table with our group and talk about the humor that we picked. My group was hesitant at first, it took us a few minutes to get things going. Once we got started, we were speaking calmly and tearing the items apart slowly. At that moment, I noticed that somehow we all took on the characteristics of our humor phlegm. I think we did so without noticing. Once we began dissecting the parts, the process made more sense. We compared the components of the humor to ourselves. We spoke of procrastination, wanting to do things perfectly, taking our time, being calm and laid back. We also talked a lot about water. The movement of water, the consistency, and the importance. Water seemed to stand out and it became my inspiration. By the end of the night, I had formed a free flowing wave out of torn lettuce. Layer after layer bending and progressing into this huge wave. It was towering and overflowing but kept it's balance. Similar to a snapshot it captured a moment. It represented a moment of calmness, a peaceful movement. Needless to say, water will be a major focus in my piece of art... After the meeting, I had a few ideas and definitely knew that I wanted water to be a key component. I spent most of the three weeks that have following researching and brainstorming. Gathering my thoughts... First, I created a list of all words I think of when I think of water. Looking at those words on my list, I chose the ones that related to my vision. These elements had to reflect the temperament calm and easygoing. Some of the words I picked were hesitation, blue, float, secluded, wave, and thirst. I looked at a lot of photos and videos of water to get a visual of the movement. My next step is to figure out how to incorporate these words and represent them with line and color. So many options so many ideas. Brainstorming and sketching all the elements together is the next step.
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by Kerri MubaarakKerri Mubaarak is artistic director of Scrapmettle. She will be blogging for The Body Project about Scrapmettle's three-month journey to create a new theatre piece responding to the humor blood. Scrapmettle creates new performances and advises writers, directors and performing artists. We honor theater tradition by expanding and contracting its elements to meet performance goals and the demands of the profession. Our approach extends the range of the artist by challenging their perceived limitations and drawing out subtle aspects of their nature that enhance the writing, character, direction or design. In creating new performances, we use theater's visceral effect to reveal what lies beneath the surface of the human experience.
For THE BODY PROJECT, Scrapmettle has jumped on as theatre-makers, and will create a new 15 minute piece inspired by their prompt - blood. Below are blog entries for Scrapmettle's first two meetings. On December 3rd Scrapmettle entered phase 1 of The Body Project | Blood. A few committed theater makers from our camp came to the table to brainstorm the old fashioned way--with pens, pencils and pieces of notebook paper ripped and shared. Out of nowhere, words, songs (from gospel to hip hop) and images landed in front of us making the vision plain and giving us something to work with. The ooo's and a-ha's of shared experiences faded into odd moments of silence from being brain tired on a Sunday afternoon. Just when I thought we were done for the day, Karin Johnson who was already standing with her purse in hand turned and in one breath laid out the structure of the piece we will write next week. Blood, in the context of a birth seen from three angles--medical, literal and symbolic. We love it when a plan comes together! December 9th: Scrapmettle firmly entered the writing phase of The Body Project | Blood. Last week, we decidedly gave this piece structure and direction, but all of that changed. Enter Ingram Bell, one of the newest members of the Scrapmettle Writing Team with a very candid recollection of being shot in the head. She carefully unfolded the events leading up to and including the incident as if to protect the rest of us from the details. We braced ourselves and asked her to keep unfolding while we reluctantly imagined the smell of dried blood and pictured it spattered with bits of brain matter on a car window. From Ingram's memory came images, scenes, set pieces and a clear storyline. Ingram's proximity to the subject and close call with death made us take a second look at Blood, still within the structure we originally defined, but in a way we couldn't have ever imagined just 7 days ago. Pictured above: Ingram Bell recounts the time she survived a gunshot wound to the head. --Kerri Mubaarak (Directing) Kate KehoeKate is a poet and co-organizer for The Body Project. She teaches poetry at UNCG. A few years ago, I attended a lecture on writing about the body. One of the panelists said, “We have an Ipod, but we are a body.” I always took this statement to mean, we don’t own ourselves, we exist in ourselves. More terrifying however, I imagined we can’t escape the failings of the body (and continue to live), in the same way we can escape external objects that fail us: the Ipod that won’t charge, the phone screen that’s cracked, or the kitchen table with one broken leg. This impermanence, the complexity, and the constraints of the body as a compared to a machine haunted me. Our failings seemed sacred, our impermanence sacred too. When Gabrielle, Jini, Jessica, and I brainstormed for the Body Project, these ideas were on my mind. We wanted to explore the living body with an eye toward the complexity we exist in everyday, but never think about. For example, we never notice the cornea that controls the light that enters our eyes like curtains, unless of course, this part of us fails. I imagined that perhaps we are only a little closer to understanding our bodies than the medievalists barbers, who were also the surgeons, offering haircuts and bloodlettings. As a collaborative group, we began to think of the systems humans have used to understand bodies. We became fascinated by the four humors, yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. Within these ideas, we found our lens for exploration. We reached out to artists, writers, painters, dancers, film makers, and others who were interested in exploring the body with us. When we brought our team together to talk about the idea, I knew that we found the right lens. We began our exploration with a game to define our humor through food. Each of us was paired off by humor and sent to a table with vegetables. My group received blood, the humor of childhood, of summer, of fire. This idea brought us back to our childhood bodies and raw moments of discovery through touch and story. We were told to build bodies and stories with our vegetables, to tear apart the eggplant or break the cucumber and we complied. Our cucumber and cabbage canoes took off on a river of noodles and seeds. The onion bombs destroyed the eggplant catfish coming to attack our ships. We told stories, we played with our food, (our hands all smelling of the lemon we tore off for our sails) and as humans sometimes do, we collaborated. We hope you’ll enjoy this exploration as much as we do. More soon. May you be well in body & mind. Kate |
AuthorsThe Greensboro poets, theatre-makers, visual artists, composers, dancers, and filmmakers of The Body Project. Presented by Storyhound Theatre and the UNCG Art Truck. Archives
March 2018
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