Sunday, April 26, 2015

Art Imitating Life

Over the last few weeks, I've been busily working at a workshop at the Logan Art Gallery with some kids and a few adults.

This Torso Body Language Workshop was chosen to be in the Workshop Wonders exhibition, along with another for the next 6 weeks; and we were all thrilled!

Well!  The in this workshop, we used plaster and molded it into an upper body torso to make it a blank canvas of sorts to put onto it our innermost feelings and thoughts.
For some of the attendants, it was about how they've survived their lives so far.  For others it was depression, bullying on social media, while for another it was overcoming great grief to become the person they are now.  For me, it was how books and the written word has made me who I am.  

I made the book out of plaster and painted it, then used medallions which say 'dreams' on them to show that inside of each flower, each idea, each thought is a dream of sorts - a way into my mind, into my imagination - to see my stories before they become what they do when I write them out. The book is just how they look to me as a finished product - whether they're a book, a story or a flash fiction - they always look like that; a dream within a dream within something else of a riddle for others to figure out... even me.

However, on opening night last Friday, my torso gave people a feeling of peace because of the colours, the flowers and what it was about: reading and the written word.  I'm happy that's how people felt, because that's how writing and books make me feel... even if I don't get to read them much, I love being surrounded by books each day; it's a type of meditation.

Workshop Wonders Opening Night Photo

Well, until my next post, happy reading. 

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