A lesson in STEALING FROM THE BEST, part 2
/Your assignment, if you will recall, was to copy these three fragments of African textile art.
Here are my results. I grabbed some supplies from my still-not-air-conditioned attic study…
…and headed out to the labyrinth to create some ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS. Note that the pieces of cardboard on the lower right are from the packages of Cecil the Pest™’s special urinary tract cat food, i.e., trash. The oil pastels have been hanging around for years; I don’t know where the white one went.
I began by making simple copies of the three fragments:
GESTALT: These are fine, just a simple monkey-see-monkey-do experiment. It helped me get a feeling for the three fragments. I did notice that the third original was frayed across the top, so…
…some SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION was appropriate.
Then it was time to play with the structures I had found.
Art paper cutouts.
Wild, non-native colors.
Explore negative space.
Eschew color altogether. Texture instead. (This one is probably my favorite.)
Minimalist. Pencil.
Isolate one element and play with texture.
This one started out well — the yellow quatrefoil did a nice blending thing with the red under it, but then it just got messy. I would count this one as a failure. #FailureIsAlwaysAnOption — BUT…
…the rectangle of silver-gray art paper struck a chord. That turned into minimalist cut-outs. (Also a favorite.)
Notice that I combined the upper rectangle of original #1 with the “Burning Man” layout of #2. That led to…
…layering with the intent to combine. More SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION.
I really like the quatrefoil knot of #1, so after one ugly ABORTIVE ATTEMPT that I ABANDONED, I got an acceptable one.
So let’s recap what happened here:
I copied the three textile fragments directly.
(I did not attempt perfection. CREATE CRAP.)
I immediately explored ways to recreate the three fragments in different ways.
Again, perfection was never an aim.
Some attempts were deliberately in opposition to previous attempts — “To do the opposite is also a form of imitation. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)”
By the time I had to stop, I had a couple of avenues I wouldn’t mind exploring.
All I had to do was replicate the design of the originals, thus relieving me of any brain-trauma of being “creative” or worse, “original.” I just got to explore strategies for manipulating those designs.
What would be the next step? I can think of two:
Explore the layering that I did in my last ABORTIVE ATTEMPT.
Using the same kinds of elements, create my own versions of the textile fragments.
So here we are. I’ve shown you mine — you show me yours in comments!
