Category Archives: Reading Reflections

Here’s where you put your biweekly reading responses

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Written Response:

Reading this article was eye-opening for me. My topic for the literature review is based on place, something that has been a theme in my artwork and life. As I’ve said before, my memories as a kid have influenced every aspect of my life. I can remember my journey as an artist and how prominent art has been in my life.

As a child, turtles were my world. Old, wise and understanding, I felt a close connection with my turtles, especially when my sisters would play without me. I spent my summer days playing with bugs, making rings out of peach pits and creating my own perfume out of flowers and water. My imagination was raging; I dreamt of worlds that would never exist, words that my turtle would never speak, and friendships with animals and bugs of all kinds. When I received the book Old Turtle, I felt like I finally found the world I belonged in.

The pages were painted with vibrancies and colors that spoke in a language I was just beginning to understand. I saw the brushstrokes and the drips, the way the colors became animals or clouds, oceans or mountains. I was learning the language of art, love and peace. In my eyes, Old Turtle was the voice of reason, the one who looked for peace and equality in all species and reminded those of what is most important only when they forgot.

This turtle emulated everything I saw in my own turtles. They were my best friends.

I reread the book over ten years later and found that the whole time Old Turtle was arguing that God was everything. God IS. But to me God was nothing. I reflected on this newfound element in a book that I must’ve read 50 times and wondered if this was a world I was meant to be a part of. Even now, writing this, I question the differences in my outlook on life over the years. The innocence and hope for peace and equality has been replaced with the expectancy of competition and a race to be better than the person sitting next to you. Sometimes, I wish there was an Old Turtle for us all to respect and understand, regardless of whom we pray to, or if we even pray at all.

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I remember Brette talking about the interaction of man vs nature in a landscape, so I decided to create one of my own landscape paintings with a driveway cutting through it. Maybe it will help Brette with her research! I really hated adding the driveway after I did it, I was thinking about scraping the the paint off but I didn’t because I’m running out of white. So I just reworked it until I liked it a little better.

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Tim Ingold’s article “Bringing things to life; creative entanglements in a world of materials” was very interesting and I found many parallels to author James Rolling within his exploration of Arts Based Research.  I feel that Ingold made very relevant point in regards to how things should be explored in the art world as the art processes unfold. Immediately upon reading, I thought of analytic arts based research methods we explored in our pedagogical, independent research. Ingold expresses the importance of materiality and process within art making. He emphasizes ideas that “forms” are actual tangible things and less subjective. I feel that he and Rolling share the same ideas in regards to knowing and investigating through means of naturalistic inquiry.

Ingold is questioning in the world, what are the relationships between people and objects? The entanglement of things-  how are things are intertwined?  Like the tree, and the inhabitants inside the bark, the bird in the nest. But the tree is not an object but a part of the thread of life. He poses other scenarios that suggest the disappearance of objects- like the desert, as a baron place without clouds. Ingold raises questions asking how open environments are cluttered wit objects. How do we live life with objects and what roles do they play in our life. Creatures? Algae?  How do we as humans decipher ways to to distinguish the difference between things and objects.

This is a good article as it opens the mind to think about how things come into existence and how they can transform with process to become something completely different- I think about the process of black and white photography and the emulsion process. Picture being in the dark room- developing your prints. The emulsion process brings your photo into existence, transforms it, allows and identity to manifest it. The photograph was previously a thing, but now it has significant meaning as it carries a narrative, therefore it has become an object.  I especially like the metaphor about the flow of the pebble that rolls as it flows in the river and transforms to become a rock.   Are clouds objects? Even though they hang around in the sky. This article expanded my way of thinking that allows for more freedom and exploration that will help m in my own practice.  As Ingold states, things leak, life leaks in regards to not only the flow of materials but the flow of life. The decay of things even should be celebrated ….

 

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I posted this originally on my own blog but I am re-posting it here to the group blog.

Immediately after reading, my mind was drawn to thinking about the visual itself of objects in spaces they are found.  In choosing to portray an object, it makes the artist think deeper about it- why is it there? What purpose does it serve? Is there thought to the visual design of the object? Who put the object there and will anyone move it, or take it away? It leads to the ability for further inquiry and a need to gain better understanding of what is actually being viewed.

object-response-painting

I have never really done much art that is like this before. Often times, I go into detail and would also include shadows to add depth and a sense of “realness” to the image.  I look at the image I made to be more abstracted and minimalist to what I would normally create.  Working in an environment as stressful and chaotic as the one I work in, I honestly found myself more drawn to the idea of utilizing more simplistic ways in art making to allow for deeper thought and comprehension of the space and visuals.  I was ultimately able to think more about the power of simplicity.  Even the simple act of flipping the image to its side can change the perception of what it is a picture of and how it may be perceived by a viewer.

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Tim Ingold’s essay, “Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials,” is a summation that nothing is static or ever finished; material forms are always acted upon by various sources. He emphasizes more importance in the process than a static product. Ingold states five aspects that support this idea of process being more important than form. His first argument is that forms are not objects but things. Things respond and react to forces allowing us to be productive or do. A thing creates a space where living happens. Second, he continues with the idea of life and agency. He defines life and agency through boundaries—not separate-but rather points where things diffuse or stick; it’s a place where things mutually act upon each other. Third, materials and materiality, is where people bring together materials in hopes of what might emerge. His fourth argument he labels improvisation and abduction. He describes this as allowing things to unfold unexpectedly; not to force a set direction or reach an end but to keep going. Lastly, he mentions network and meshwork. He describes this area of interaction as a place where things act indirectly upon other things. Overall, Ingold states that there is mutual interaction among things, whether indirectly or directly, and that forms are not static objects, but necessities that allow us to experience. We should look at the process of things rather than things as dead objects.
Ingold utilizes beautiful descriptions or metaphors as examples to explain these areas of interaction among things. The reading is a beautiful analysis for artwork, and how artwork is not a static object with a set ending; rather, a boundary where interactions occur, or the areas in which materials are brought together with no set expectation just a hopeful emergence of an ever evolving thing. In essence, his five points of argument are powerful supporters for the description of creativity.

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Tim Ingold’s essay, “Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials,” is a summation that nothing is static or ever finished; material forms are always acted upon by various sources. He emphasizes more importance in the process than a static product. Ingold states five aspects that support this idea of process being more important than form. His first argument is that forms are not objects but things. Things respond and react to forces allowing us to be productive or do. A thing creates a space where living happens. Second, he continues with the idea of life and agency. He defines life and agency through boundaries—not separate-but rather points where things diffuse or stick; it’s a place where things mutually act upon each other. Third, materials and materiality, is where people bring together materials in hopes of what might emerge. His fourth argument he labels improvisation and abduction. He describes this as allowing things to unfold unexpectedly; not to force a set direction or reach an end but to keep going. Lastly, he mentions network and meshwork. He describes this area of interaction as a place where things act indirectly upon other things. Overall, Ingold states that there is mutual interaction among things, whether indirectly or directly, and that forms are not static objects, but necessities that allow us to experience. We should look at the process of things rather than things as dead objects.
Ingold utilizes beautiful descriptions or metaphors as examples to explain these areas of interaction among things. The reading is a beautiful analysis for artwork, and how artwork is not a static object with a set ending; rather, a boundary where interactions occur, or the areas in which materials are brought together with no set expectation just a hopeful emergence of an ever evolving thing. In essence, his five points of argument are powerful supporters for the description of creativity.

Posted on
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Tim Ingold’s essay, “Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials,” is a summation that nothing is static or ever finished; material forms are always acted upon by various sources. He emphasizes more importance in the process than a static product. Ingold states five aspects that support this idea of process being more important than form. His first argument is that forms are not objects but things. Things respond and react to forces allowing us to be productive or do. A thing creates a space where living happens. Second, he continues with the idea of life and agency. He defines life and agency through boundaries—not separate-but rather points where things diffuse or stick; it’s a place where things mutually act upon each other. Third, materials and materiality, is where people bring together materials in hopes of what might emerge. His fourth argument he labels improvisation and abduction. He describes this as allowing things to unfold unexpectedly; not to force a set direction or reach an end but to keep going. Lastly, he mentions network and meshwork. He describes this area of interaction as a place where things act indirectly upon other things. Overall, Ingold states that there is mutual interaction among things, whether indirectly or directly, and that forms are not static objects, but necessities that allow us to experience. We should look at the process of things rather than things as dead objects.
Ingold utilizes beautiful descriptions or metaphors as examples to explain these areas of interaction among things. The reading is a beautiful analysis for artwork, and how artwork is not a static object with a set ending; rather, a boundary where interactions occur, or the areas in which materials are brought together with no set expectation just a hopeful emergence of an ever evolving thing. In essence, his five points of argument are powerful supporters for the description of creativity.