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%”]
[image_with_animation image_url=”9888″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Wordsmith Studio Found poems are the literary equivalent of a collage, often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, books, online texts (v-notes?), or even other poems. For today’s challenge, take an existing text and refashion it, reorder it, to make a poem. Thank you for sharing your …
[image_with_animation image_url=”10579″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] How many different surfaces have you painted on? It wasn’t until I discovered linen that I liked my oil paintings. Really. Everything I did when I painted, I hated. Well, at least I felt it wasn’t working. The way I moved the paint just kind of felt… meh. I …
My silence these past few days has not been intentional. I lost my mojo. Art classes are on break, human contact is absent, the news that I thought was bad, got worse. I was at a loss for what to send you. Black artists. Black artists. More black artists. The last time there was racial …
League instructor Jon Patrick is teaching a class on artist’s books. One of the works mentioned in his class today was this collaboration between Asger Jorn and Guy Debord. Jorn and Debord were part of Situationist International, and CoBrA. [divider line_type=”Full Width Line From Wikipedia: Mémoires (Memories) is an artist’s book made by the Danish artist …
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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[image_with_animation image_url=”9888″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Wordsmith Studio Found poems are the literary equivalent of a collage, often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, books, online texts (v-notes?), or even other poems. For today’s challenge, take an existing text and refashion it, reorder it, to make a poem. Thank you for sharing your …
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[image_with_animation image_url=”10579″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] How many different surfaces have you painted on? It wasn’t until I discovered linen that I liked my oil paintings. Really. Everything I did when I painted, I hated. Well, at least I felt it wasn’t working. The way I moved the paint just kind of felt… meh. I …
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