Collaborative project: From cradle to parlour. Issue 1 (1st April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rohr, Doris; Clarke, Niamh
• Is Part Of: Drawing. Volume 5:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 59
• Page End: 72
• Publication Date: 2020-04-01
• Subjects: Drawing -- Periodicals; 741.05
• DOI: 10.1386/drtp_00020_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2057-0392

Abstract

This co-authored project report considers the polarity of the ephemeral (concept, memory, recollection) with the material aspect of creativity, as it manifests itself in the related yet complimentary practices of writing and drawing. The craft of drawing is complex and hybrid, more akin to writing processes as a means of embodying and making physical through gesture, than many other art forms and processes that rely on material presence. Writing and drawing materialize memory, ideas and projective thought and attempt to manifest their transience. The joint project research (Clarke|Rohr) was originally presented as a contribution to 'Drawings of, Drawings by and Drawings with …' chaired by Ray Lucas (Manchester University) for the conference Art, Materiality and Representation, Royal Anthropological Institution, SOAS/British Museum, in June 2018. We are grateful for the opportunity to further evaluate and publish the progression of the project in this issue of DRTP. The idea for a collaborative drawing project that involves text|image translations was borne from conversations between Niamh Clarke and Doris Rohr. Clarke perceived visual, structural and textual affinities between the modernist novel The Waves by Virginia Woolf and the drawings of waves by the Latvian American photorealist artist Vija Celmins. This prompted an experimental project: what type of textual responses might be found in another's drawing, and, in turn, what type of visual drawn image might be generated in response to a short text of creative writing? We decided to limit the postal exchange of material to three A4 drawings and three individual short excerpts of poetry or prose. It was agreed that we would monitor our personal reactions, emotions and analysis of the process and store the responses via a shared digital platform (Google Drive). The project's premise was to interrogate image and text relationships and the possibilities to translate or influence one through the other. Our aim is to explore materiality and subject matter through drawing with a mediated sense of authorship.