When I was little, before I could write, I would pretend to write in cursive. I’d take a pencil and paper and draw repeated double loops like cursive f’s, and scrawl graceful wavy lumpy lines. That’s what cursive looked like. I’d pretend to write a doctoral dissertation. My parents were in grad school in Claremont at the time, and I was surrounded by kind academics and their rumpled papers, so in order to make it authentic I’d crumple up the paper as if I was experiencing frustration, then press it all out again, erasing and adding notations in the margins. I would repeat this over and over, with perfect seriousness. I thought it was a beautiful process. I didn’t grow up to write a dissertation, but I did grow up to be a writer, and I am sorry they no longer teach cursive in schools. I still love the look of cursive, and of rumpled paper.
Today, I propose an asemic writing project. Draw lines that resemble words, but without writing anything of meaning.
“Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content,” or “without the smallest unit of meaning.” With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret.” – Wikipedia
Thank you to the hauntingly mysterious League painter Siobhan Wilder for this idea. [image_with_animation image_url=”7858″ alignment=”center” animation=”Fade In” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”]
Happy Thanksgiving Americans! Here is a selection of my favorite artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s online collection. And, if you find yourself in the mood for a song or two, here’s a collection of Thanksgiving songs from Smithsonian Folkways. Depending on your taste, you may happily skip the first song and start with …
[image_with_animation image_url=”8071″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Drawings by Ruthie V. I received a very nice letter today. It’s about line, and how one League artist improved her quality of line – not by thinking about improving the quality of her line directly – but by checking in on her level of engagement with the drawing. …
Edited from the original post by Lindsey Rae Gjording http://vanguardseattle.com/2014/05/14/artists-way-whiting-tennis/ [image_with_animation image_url=”4017″ alignment=”” animation=”None Letting the line happen Although always evolving, his process has been pared to what is proven to work best, a combination of drawing and more processed pieces that follow after that. He explains: “It starts out of drawings. I draw on paper …
SAL Challenge Day 26: Asemic Writing
[image_with_animation image_url=”7856″ alignment=”center” animation=”Fade In” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”]
Siobhan Wilder, painting in progress
When I was little, before I could write, I would pretend to write in cursive. I’d take a pencil and paper and draw repeated double loops like cursive f’s, and scrawl graceful wavy lumpy lines. That’s what cursive looked like. I’d pretend to write a doctoral dissertation. My parents were in grad school in Claremont at the time, and I was surrounded by kind academics and their rumpled papers, so in order to make it authentic I’d crumple up the paper as if I was experiencing frustration, then press it all out again, erasing and adding notations in the margins. I would repeat this over and over, with perfect seriousness. I thought it was a beautiful process. I didn’t grow up to write a dissertation, but I did grow up to be a writer, and I am sorry they no longer teach cursive in schools. I still love the look of cursive, and of rumpled paper.
Today, I propose an asemic writing project. Draw lines that resemble words, but without writing anything of meaning.
Thank you to the hauntingly mysterious League painter Siobhan Wilder for this idea. [image_with_animation image_url=”7858″ alignment=”center” animation=”Fade In” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”]
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