Jonathan McCree — The Joy Project

Continuing the Art of Play
April 14, 2021

Artist: Jonathan McCree

Join Zoom Meeting / Class
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87618016665

Memory is a fickle friend, and we've been afforded few opportunities to form new ones as of late. But revery comes in the most unexpected forms. While we sit confined in our own proverbial white cubes for the foreseeable future - bored, waiting, idling - McCree's joyful follies open our world to new possibilities, endless in scope, and a vital reminder of the value of daydream.

— Jessica Klingelfuss, January 2021

Artist Bio (sim-smith.com):

Painting and performance, painting as performance and the performances of paintings. Jonathan McCree works with film, installation, painting and sculpture as a record of movement and emotion through space. He pushes the boundaries of what is normally perceived as architecture and demonstrates how experimental practice can help uncover new strategies for exploring spatial ideas and qualities. Materiality and structure are main considerations, giving way to a deeper understanding of the spaces we navigate on a daily basis. He works with traditional notions of architecture but also with the architecture of the body and the mind. With references to the historical, the biographical and the quotidian, McCree’s work reflects a series of moments, the concept of potential, a space where anything can happen. Exploring lived experience in the body, paint, and painting, serves not only as a visual medium, but as a performative one, a study of the physical across space and time.

“anything can be a painting; marks on a sheet of paper or canvas, a dance, a film, a crowd” through a merging of artistic genres in a site-specific environment that challenges preconceived notions of the role of the viewer from the moment they enter the space.”

Context:

Below is a list of Mcree's work from the past 7 years — a timeline of evolution that seems to have informed his latest exhibition High Folly:

2013 | collaged mixed media works on paper, tight, dense, and carefully formed
2015 | more open seemingly spontaneous works on paper
2016 | sculptures that look as if his paintings have jumped off the paper and reset themselves
2021 | simple colorful monolithic forms with fanciful cutouts, responding to a year of shutdown/isolation and offering the viewer an experience of play and participation

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Warm-up:

Using a medium that will allow loose play, we will take inspiration from McCree's 2015 mixed media works on paper. As you warm up to think about color, form, shapes, and movement. Just "get it out"!

Project:

We are working toward a piece that is inspired by McCree's latest project,

2021 installation of High Folly (colorful, simple cutout 3D forms)

After a messy, playful, spontaneous warmup, grab shapes, ideas, and a color palette from your work and create a more simplified deconstructed final piece.

You may choose to draw/paint a piece on paper or cut out your 2D pieces, repositioning them on another piece of paper.

You may be inclined to create a 3D response.

However, you choose to be inspired and respond is up to you!

Artist Info:

Sim Smith Website

Instagram