why jamming?

I asked myself if the Visual Arts can occupy a similar space as music and sound or performance / entertainment / movement / dance?

I always notice how the visual arts in general are still not as accessible or understood by as many people as other live timebased expressive mediums ( above). Yet there must be a way, right? There must be a way because visual expression and visual communication is in the remit of us all…think of our senses and all the information we have and use by using our senses alone…sound, sight, smell, taste, touch. …yet of course by an early age current education systems here in the UK tend to squeeze the value of visual thinking to dust.

What if we can create live visual art jamming sessions, that are timebased, and capture us at a particular point in time…work that can never be repeated in the same way again. Photographs are document and souvenir.

What if we can create sequences of live events of people responding to what they see, the light, the place, the architecture, the small things, the people, the floors….as interchangeable groups of people who play and find out and discover and …then it ends.

What if people could access the visual arts and feel a part of its urgency, can feel vital in their role in its development?

and what if more and more people can become curious in a safe space, can begin fresh connections with others ( or not), can begin to grow in confidence in their own ability to be creative thinkers. And we all know that creative thinking cuts across all industries, and all languages.

I remembered then, that when at the RCA in London, my thesis was comparing the action of a painter painting with that of a child playing. I have had 2 hiatus from the creative industries and during one of these I was a school teacher.

I also remember playing in the playground as a child…copying TV programmes, interchanging of characters, playing alone or with others…or not. Children re-enact scenarios from home and their lives in their own ways to process and understand themselves and contexts they live in.

There are so many examples, but I will keep this text short! I noticed my practise in my last studio was based on lines of discovery…and has always been about Play. Play is my default method of working…and learning. How else can we take ourselves into an area of learning when we don't know the question? My method, therefore, is a starting point. moving objects and assembling in different formats, photographing, looking, photographing, noticing, adjusting, seeing, photographing, adding, taking away light, colour, photographing… until I have reached a point of not knowing but seeing and understanding what I have made is right.  It is this play with materials, playing with visual ideas that takes me into new turf.

In trying to tie together my love of facilitating others to make work and with my own method and outcome of practise, I chose to share my methodology of play with everyone else.

Everyone will play differently, and have different needs.