Continuing the Art of Play
October 27, 2021
Artist: Joan Mitchell
Join Zoom Meeting / Class
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87618016665
Mitchell in her studio in Paris in September 1956. Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Shutterstock
“Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work.”
—Joan Mitchell
About the artist
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Joan Mitchell was an American painter and printmaker who also worked in pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the 1950s in the New York School of artists. Wikipedia
Warm-up
Please have the following materials ready for our warm-up:
• Paper: 6 sheets - any size, any type
Other Materials (you may choose more than one):
• Acrylic Paint
• Watercolor
• Pencils
• Markers
• Pastels
Tools
If you are choosing to work with paint or very malleable or wet material, you may want to select some unconventional mark-making tools.
Here are some ideas:
• a sponge
• an old toothbrush
• a stick
• a mesh material
• the side of a piece of cardboard to drag a wet application
There are so many options if you choose this route.
I will lead the warm-up by giving you one word to respond to spontaneously with marks using the materials that you have gathered. We will limit the response time to 4 or 5 minutes for each piece.
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Project
Please choose a poem to use as inspiration for your project.
It may be a single line or the entire poem.
Please reference the painting below by Joan Mitchell "Harbormaster" 1957.
Joan Mitchell (American 1925–1992), “Soldats des Bois,” 1956, oil on canvas. Private Collection, L2021.46
George Went Swimming at Barnes Hole, but It Got Too Cold | 1957
Untitled | circa 1957
Joan Mitchell, Evenings on 73rd Street, circa 1957. Oil on canvas, 75 x 85 inches (190.5 x 215.9 cm). © Estate of Joan Mitchell.
“To the Harbormaster” (1957), titled after her friend Frank O’Hara’s poem of the same name. Its first lines: “I am always tying up/And then deciding to depart.”
Joan Mitchell, La Vie en Rose, 1979; Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift and Purchase, George A. Hearn Fund, by exchange, 1991 (1991.139a-d); © Estate of Joan Mitchell
Espace Louis Vuitton Osaka presents the exhibition “Fragments of Landscape”
“La Ligne de la rupture,” 1970–71.
Installation view | Joan Mitchell, I carry my landscapes around with me
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