Body as an Object

For certain now (I think), I will be choosing the genre of drawing (in charcoal) for the topic of "Body as an Object." The more I got to thinking, and once my hands were actually on the project itself, I found collaging to be far more difficult than I had imagined. As I REALLY put thought into the kind of art I thought I could see myself doing, the more I realized the only form of art I knew well was performing art. I was a dancer for almost 14 yrs until I decided to take a different route and involved myself in other extracurricular activities, such as cheerleading, band, and then of coarse theater; again, my experience has been very performance based.

Taking inspiration from my own experience on the stage and costuming, and after scouring several internet sights for ideas (the ballerina project, especially), I finally put pencil to paper and found that I could consolidate my ideas, for my perception of body...starting with body language, to body as a metaphor, and now my current topic of body as an object to create (on paper) what we essentially do on stage...always taking the form of something other than ourselves. My direction with my sketches was to portray the transformation of the body of a dancer mimicking the shape or form of anything other than human.

For now, and I think I want to continue in this way, my figures are faceless and pretty shapeless. This is mostly because my idea is not aimed toward body image or sexuality, it's about body as a structure. It isn't about the way I see myself or wish I could be, just simply about conforming and transforming.

The first sketch, body as a tree, was actually constructed as a joke between myself and my daughter. In my frustration to chose something more doable, I said "look at me, I'm a tree!" and we both looked at each other and new I had to make that happen. The other sketches just kind of came to me as I watched television and surfed the internet, looking for inspiration.