with Nikka Singh
Saturdays Oct. 10 & 17, 2-4pm
at PS1 Close Main Hall (538 S. Gilbert)
pay-what-you-can: $XX-XXX
It can be hard to not fall into routine and miss the world. We move through the day. Headphones in. Answer messages. Buy lunch. We forget the blue dappled light dancing beneath the tree or the strange sentence someone said in line. In this two-week workshop, visual artists will use the notebook as a way to keep looking. Not just a place to save ideas for later. A place where the work is already happening. What changes when we draw what we would normally describe? What happens when we write beside an image? Can a list become a portrait? Can a page of notes lead us somewhere we did not know we needed to go? How can our sustained attention help us to notice more?
We will treat the notebook as a studio, a field journal, and a small laboratory. Participants will collect quotations, images, colors, overheard language, memories, questions, and ordinary objects. We will test pens, pencils, brushes, collage, diagrams, short writing forms, and new ways of arranging a page. We might follow one detail through a room or a city block. Draw a sound. Describe an object until it becomes strange. Make a map of a feeling. Most of our time will be spent making, sharing, walking, observing, and trying again. There will be some brief discussion of artists, writers, naturalists, and other devoted note takers. Then back to the page.
The goal is not to make a perfect notebook. Nothing like that exists. It is to build a practice that keeps us curious and ready. A way to carry our work beyond the desk. A way to notice more and become more engaged with what we notice. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a growing collection of pages and a set of practices they can continue on their own. We will look closely at the world around us. We may also find our way into the stranger country inside ourselves. And perhaps return a little changed.
Open to ages 18+. Participants need to bring a notebook (new or old with space for new work). Basic drawing materials and tools will be available.
Registration deadline: October 6th
PS1 workshops are pay-what-you-can thanks to support from Hills Bank, a Johnson County Quality of Life Grant, and individual donors. $XXX is the true cost of the workshop for each participant. We encourage participants to select the cost that they can afford (including free), or pay a little extra to support future sliding-scale fees.
If you are unsure about which fee to select, please reach out to workshops@publicspaceone.com.
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TEACHING ARTIST:
Nikka is from California’s Inland Empire and is currently a graduate student in the Nonfiction Writing Program. His current projects center on his family, and use text and images. Specifically, his drawings work unlike images in traditionally illustrated books, as they work to complicate narrative threads and anonymity. But don’t hold him to any of this, he’s still working it out. However, one thing he is certain about is not having the light on in two rooms simultaneously, as he once had a neighbor who repeatedly called and shamed him for this “waste of precious energy,” that man was four-time presidential candidate, Ralph Nader.