sessions alternative art school

introduction

Sky Travel announced in 2005 that the third Monday in January was the most depressing day of the year. Since then a number of events and publications have been produced for this day to counteract the emotional comes down from the festive season. Sessions will start on Blue Monday, helping you combat those New Year Blues.

Aimed at artists who want to revitalise their practice through play and improvisation. ‘Sessions’ takes its cue from Jazz jam sessions. The idea to simply create within a given time with no real outcome intended, other than to push and develop your skills.

9 am meet up each morning via Zoom. A new theme is provided everyday, alternatively you can come up with your own theme for the day/week. Friday Google meet up to round off the week. Share your work and get feedback from the other students.

Each day the class will be given a theme or cue for the Session. It’s recommended that you dedicate 2 hours per day, or 10 hours over the week to get the most out of the school.

Day 1

We started off by introducing ourselves, and I discussed why I chose to set up the school and how the week would play out.

The theme was ‘Rituals’ and I decided that mine would be to add work to the case I made each day, along with going for walks at lunch and setting time aside to read.

day 2 & 3

An introduction to Oulipo, a group of French writers and mathematicians who wanted to create written pieces with constrain techniques. The exercise we undertook was a word snowball.

Theme - Exercises in Style

Day 3 say us go through the Bauhaus exercise - skating on paper.

Theme - The study of equilibrium

DAy 4

A Notan workshop was held, a Japanese term which means ‘light dark harmony’. It is used to explore light and dark elements within painting traditionally.

Theme - The practice of not thinking

The case takes its design from an old Eastman 5x4 negative holder. In this instance it contains all the information from the week; the timetable, the exercises, the daily themes.

day 5

The last day was passed over the participants. They were given the opportunity to run the workshop, Victoria Doyle took over for the morning at did a free writing workshop.

Theme - XX without YY (with participants decided what XX and YY stood for. I was given the theme Painting without Thinking.