DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

2013/03/27

Exploring Together

Still from "Rocks Remember", 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

I’m interested in the moving body and movement in nature, and I’m always trying to capture the spirit of motion in my drawings, but of course I love actual moving pictures too. I like to make simple, non-narrative films, often working with dancers. A couple of years ago I suggested to my friend, dancer Kristin Hatleberg that if she would like to do some kind of dance film, I’d be up for it. She mentioned a curious landscape she wanted to explore, Ringing Rocks State Park, in Pennsylvania.

Still from "Ringing Rocks", 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Ringing Rocks Park has a large field of boulders that ring like metal bells when struck with a hammer or with another stone. These boulders are called “lithophonic” or “sonorous rocks”. Geologists believe the tones emitted by these stones are the result of “internal elastic stresses”, but the science isn’t settled. It’s a mysterious and enchanting phenomenon.

Still from "Rocks Remember", 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

So one day Kristin rented a Zipcar and we took a day trip to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. With us were Kristin’s friend Jim Smith, a composer and music producer, and my friend Yuko Takebe, a talented dance filmmaker who’d just gotten a new HD camcorder and was eager to put it to use. I had my camera with me too.

Still from "Ringing Rocks", 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

We had almost no plan about how to film at this site, aside from the idea that Jim was going to go around and hammer on the rocks and record sounds, and Kristin was going to dance in the environment, and Yuko and I were going to film Kristin and the landscape. None of us had ever been to Ringing Rocks before, so we didn’t know exactly what we’d encounter. Together we would explore and collect images and sounds, and then we would see what we could make of them. It was a fairly egalitarian collaboration, and the whole process would be a journey without a map.

Still from "Rocks Remember", 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

There was a large clearing covered with big jagged boulders, a forested area, and a small ravine with a waterfall. It was a late autumn day so our daylight hours would be limited, and the angle of the sun would change quickly through the afternoon.

Still from "Ringing Rocks", 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Dancing on a jumble of sharp and irregular rocks is nothing like dancing in a studio with open space and a nice smooth hardwood floor. In fact, it’s a bit dangerous. I’m not sure if Kristin imagined doing balletic leaps from stone to stone, but when she actually started moving in the boulder field, she found herself hugging the rocks, rolling over them and in and out of the crevices. It looked a little like contact improvisation with very heavy, very hard dance partners.  Kristin took the same grounded, tactile approach to other elements of the landscape as well.

Still from "Rocks Remember", 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Since there was no script and almost no plan, we all just sort of went about doing our own explorations in whatever way felt appropriate in the moment. Jim rang the rocks until he got the birds to join in the symphony. Yuko and I looked for aesthetically pleasing compositions and dynamic camera angles. Kristin climbed and stroked and became one with the earth.

Still from "Ringing Rocks", 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

We decided that Yuko and I would share all our footage and sound recordings, but each of us would edit our own version of the material. When I started editing, I found it really challenging. It felt like a random collection of shots that just wouldn’t gel. There was no clear beginning, middle, or end, no unifying design, no choreographic continuity. The color and visual quality of the images from the two cameras was way different, and there were lots of technical problems such as sun glare and noisy tourists who were also at the park that day on the sound track. The rapidly changing light meant a shot made at 2:00 would never match with one made at 3:00.

Still from "Rocks Remember", 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

For my first edit, I decided to use just two parts of our footage, the waterfall scene and the field of boulders. I decided to convert everything to black and white, both to eliminate the color differences between the two cameras and to make Kristin, who was dressed in tones of pink and purple, blend in more with the textures of stone and earth. I pulled out what I thought were the best bits of movement and labeled them according to whether the movement was up or down or rotating or whatever, and then basically assembled those movements into an illusion of continuity. It sort of worked, but it had a monotonous rhythm, and after test-screening it for Kristin and my filmmaker friend David Finkelstein, I ended up making it more fragmented and spare, maybe more about the landscape and less about the dance. For my version of the piece, Jim Smith structured some of the sound recordings from the site into a simple composition.

I think my final version captures something beautiful about experiencing oneself as part of the earth by direct contact with it. Human beings are of the earth just as much as are stones or trees, and we should feel it in our bones and in our skin.

A video piece is something different than the experience by which its source material came to be.  In the end it becomes something in itself, something that is experienced as a moving image, by people who have no knowledge of its making. My struggle to structure this material into a piece helped me to find a new sense of how to assemble moving images, and after editing this piece I found I was finally able to complete several other video pieces I had shot that had lingered unfinished for years.

Still from "Ringing Rocks", 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

I don’t know too much about how Yuko approached the task of editing. Her basic impulse is more narrative and less formal than mine, and she has a knack for making good use of “flaws” like camera shake and lens flare. Her version is in color,and I feel it gives more of a sense of Kristin as a person interacting with the landscape, where mine seems more like some kind of elemental ritual.

Still from "Rocks Remember", 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Here’s what Kristin wrote about the experience:

When Fred asked what I’d like to collaborate on, I thought here’s a rare opportunity to distill a moment. What if every element of this lasting capsule, this film, results completely from its environment? I chose Ringing Rocks State Park because of how literally it could yield all the elements. Our agreement was to focus fully on the park itself, and for me the rocks were a solidity into which I could melt away. I set out to evaporate over them, roll like an ocean wave across their challenging formations. What a metaphorical parallel this act was to dealing with life. I used all my strength to simply be, there.

For me our experience at the Ringing Rocks State Park was a meditative experience, and I think that spills over into the intent of each of the resulting films. It was meditation that arose from necessity, for the sake of harmonious survival. While we were in the park, I was not there to recreate or mimic anything. Instead, my focus was to listen to all the textures. I dove into my senses and I tried to absorb every texture of the place until the most dominant ones seeped back out of me. Because I was approaching it through absorption, I was meditating and accepting. Accepting the jagged contours into my flesh as I rolled over them, softening the harshness of the landscape by joining a wave of air and riding its current over the topography. When each element has its autonomy, it is simpler to find harmony.

All I am doing in my actions is revealing what was revealed to me, simply by being there: there, hanging off the top of that rock upside down; there, perched between three trunks of a tree without a limb on which to sit; there, hearing the beautiful water while feeling the cold, smooth stone slide away from under me. The films that resulted therefore do not give me any answers or pose questions to me. They simply reveal contours, light, textures. Watching them, I can momentarily breathe again a cleaner air.

Still from "Ringing Rocks", 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Yuko said this about the experience:

I had never known stone that resonates like a bell until Kristin took me to Ringing Rocks Park. The high-pitched tone, but involving the profound sound as hit by a hammer, brought me to feel time immemorial. Kristin danced as if she were swimming, freely and slowly, between big rough rocks. Her movement looked like just a spirit of the rocks to me. The rock has immanent memories since the earth has existed, and its sound tells us the history of our life. The water flows and wind blows on the surface of the rocks. The beautiful golden strings are spun by a spider and gnats are flying between rocks. That moment fulfilled by stillness and serenity only appeared in an early evening glow. I wanted to capture the eternal flow of time and the spiritual harmony between the perpetuity of nature and a mortal life through Kristin’s dance and my lenses.

So now I have told you my story. My collaborators have offered their beautiful perspectives on this joint exploration of the land in movement and film. There is nothing left but for you to watch the two films, first, “Rocks Remember”, Yuko’s edit, and then “Ringing Rocks”, my version.

Rocks Remember from Yuko Takebe on Vimeo.

Ringing Rocks from Fred Hatt on Vimeo.

Both of these films will be projected outdoors as part of the SB-ADaPT Festival of Dance and Physical Theater in Santa Barbara, California, this summer. I’ll add the dates and more info here when I have it. 

2013/02/24

Motion in Stills

Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912, by Giacomo Balla

Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912, by Giacomo Balla

Isn’t this a wonderful evocation of the movement of an excited dachshund out for a walk? You can just feel the undulations of the leash and the wagging of the tail, and you can almost hear the clicking of the dog’s toenails on the sidewalk. A camera might capture this scene by freezing an instant. This would give us more surface detail, but none of the jaunty spirit that Balla shares with us here.

In this post I present a variety of modern approaches to capturing movement in the still media of drawing and painting, sculpture, and photography. If you’d like a more systematic approach to the topic, I recommend this excellent overview by James E. Cutting. I have had a longstanding interest in depicting the spirit of movement, especially human movement, through drawing, and my selection here reflects that.

Classical art tends to imply the energy and movement of characters by putting them in poses of dynamic tension, or by depicting the flow of hair or drapery to suggest motion – some great sculptural examples are examined in the earlier post “Stories in the Round”.

Many of the prints in Hokusai’s series of “manga” (sketchbooks) are sharply observed pictures of human movement, sometimes shown in series of little drawings that look very much like the work of an animator.  Surely Hokusai would have made animations if the concept had existed in his time!

Yakko-Odori, c. 1814, by Katsushika Hokusai

Yakko-Odori, c. 1814, by Katsushika Hokusai 

The sculptor Auguste Rodin discusses how he endeavors to endow his works with movement, from the book Rodin on Art and Artists.

Note, first, that movement is the transition from one attitude to another. . . You have certainly read in Ovid how Daphne was transformed into a bay-tree and Procne into a swallow. This charming writer shows us the body of the one taking on its covering of leaves and bark and the members of the other clothing themselves in feathers, so that in each of them one still sees the woman which will cease to be and the tree or bird which she will become. . . It is, in short, a metamorphosis of this kind that the painter or the sculptor effects in giving movement to his personages.  He represents the transition from one pose to another. . . while my Saint John is represented with both feet on the ground, it is probable that an instantaneous photograph from a model making the same movement would show the back foot already raised and carried toward the other. . . this model photographed would present the odd appearance of a man suddenly stricken with paralysis and petrified in his pose. . . If, in fact, in instantaneous photographs, the figures, though taken while moving, seem suddenly fixed in mid-air, it is because , all parts of the body being reproduced exactly at the same twentieth or fortieth of a second, there is no progressive development of movement as there is in art. . . It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop, and if the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended.

St. John the Baptist Preaching, 1878, by Auguste Rodin

St. John the Baptist Preaching, 1878, by Auguste Rodin

Rodin is defending the traditional artistic approach of depicting moments against the new, photographically influenced, way of seeing time as a series of instants. Though he aligns himself with the classicists in this, Rodin was more interested in movement than the more academic artists.  He did countless quick sketches, both in clay and in pencil and watercolor, observing figures in motion and capturing the quality of their aliveness with a remarkably free hand.

Psyche, c. 1900, by Auguste Rodin

Psyche, c. 1900, by Auguste Rodin 

The “instantaneous photography” Rodin mentions was a new development in the late 19th Century.  It enabled the analysis of movement too quick for the human eye, much less the drawing hand, to capture. In the 1880’s, Marey in France and Muybridge in California developed technologies for photographing movement in sequences of still photographs. Muybridge’s work was bankrolled by former California Governor Leland Stanford to settle a bet he had going about whether all four legs of a running horse were off the ground simultaneously at some point in the gallop (they are). This was something that could not be determined by naked eye observation. Muybridge went on to photograph analytical movement sequences of many animals and human models performing all kinds of actions, and his pictures are still studied by artists, animators, and anatomists.

Long Jump, 1887, from "Human and Animal Locomotion", photo by Eadweard Muybridge

Long Jump, 1887, from “Human and Animal Locomotion”, photo by Eadweard Muybridge

Where Muybridge’s method produced a series of discrete stills, Marey’s technique superimposed the phases of movement in a single image.

Flight of the Pelican, 1883, photo by Etienne-Jules Marey

Flight of the Pelican, 1883, photo by Etienne-Jules Marey

The photography of Muybridge and Marey is a kind of proto-cinema, and motion picture technology grew out of their work. This study of walking (below) using a black body suit with reflective lines and dots on it even seems to prefigure the “motion capture” techniques used today to transfer movement from live actors to digitally generated characters.

Geometric Chronophotograph of the Man in the Black Suit, 1883, photo by Etienne-Jules Marey

Geometric Chronophotograph of the Man in the Black Suit, 1883, photo by Etienne-Jules Marey

From Marey’s photography Marcel Duchamp took this idea of superimposing temporal instants and combined it with a cubist fragmentation of form to produce his famous “Nude Descending a Staircase”, which caused a sensation – both of outrage and of inspiration – when it was exhibited at the Armory Show of 1913, the first major exhibition of European avant-garde art in America.

Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912, by Marcel Duchamp

Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912, by Marcel Duchamp

Boccioni attempted something similar in sculptural form, distorting the figure to emphasize its dynamism. Boccioni, who also painted, and Balla, whose trotting dachshund leads this post, were members of the Italian Futurist art movement, obsessed with speed and frenzy.

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, by Umberto Boccioni

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, by Umberto Boccioni

This is an excerpt from the Futurist Manifesto of 1909, by F. T. Marinetti:

  1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
  2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
  3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
  4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
  5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
Elasticity, 1912, by Umberto Boccioni

Elasticity, 1912, by Umberto Boccioni

The world was being transformed and unsettled by new technologies and new media, and all the conventions of art seemed to lose their power, opening up new worlds of creative possibility.  Among purely abstract painters, Kandinsky seemed to have a special ability to create compositions that felt like they contained leaping, vibrating life force.

Blue Segment, 1921, by Wassily Kandinsky

Blue Segment, 1921, by Wassily Kandinsky 

In the 1930’s, electrical engineer Harold “Doc” Edgerton and Life Magazine photographer Gjon Mili worked together to develop the photographic possibilities of electronic strobe lighting, which made it possible to slice time into increasingly brief instants.

Milk Coronet, 1957, by Harold Edgerton

Milk Coronet, 1957, photo by Harold Edgerton

Stroboscopic photography improved Marey’s sequential superimposition technique, capturing faster motion with ultra clarity.

Bobby Jones Multi Flash, 1938, by Harold Edgerton

Bobby Jones Multi Flash, 1938, photo by Harold Edgerton

These photographers saw themselves as following in the footsteps of Duchamp. Here are two stroboscopic photo homages to the avant-garde master, by Life Magazine photographers Gjon Mili and Eliot Elisofon.

Nude Descending  1942, by Gjon Mili

Nude Descending, 1942, photo by Gjon Mili

Duchamp Descending a Staircase, 1952, photo by Eliot Elisofon

Duchamp Descending a Staircase, 1952, photo by Eliot Elisofon

Strobes distilled the energy and grace of great performing artists into striking images for magazines, the great popular graphic art medium of the era. Below, the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham and the drummer Gene Krupa.

Martha Graham performing "Punch and Judy", 1941, photo by Gjon Mili

Martha Graham performing “Punch and Judy”, 1941, photo by Gjon Mili

Gene Krupa Playing a Drum, 1941, photo by Gjon Mili

Gene Krupa Playing a Drum, 1941, photo by Gjon Mili

Of course, the art of painting is also fundamentally a movement art, as demonstrated here by Picasso, drawing in the air with a penlight, captured by the photographer with a long exposure combined with three strobe flashes.

Picasso Drawing with Light, 1949, by Gjon Mili

Picasso Drawing with Light, 1949, by Gjon Mili

Asian calligraphy had always been taught as an art of expressive movement, but Jackson Pollock was one of the first Western artists to treat painting as a form of dance. Here’s a video clip of Pollock at work.

Jackson Pollock Painting in his Long Island Studio, 1950, photo by Hans Namuth

Jackson Pollock Painting in his Long Island Studio, 1949, photo by Hans Namuth 

Dancers also used drawing and painting to try to show what they feel kinesthetically and proprioceptually. Here’s a sketch by Nijinsky, the dancer of Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun and the original choreographer of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Dancer, 1917, by Vaclav Nijinsky

Dancer, 1917, by Vaslav Nijinsky

Nijinsky’s painting looks remarkably similar to the analytical drawing below by choreographer Rudolf von Laban. Laban created a system for analyzing and describing bodily movement. Laban described qualities of movement using evocative verbs: Float and Punch, Glide and Slash, Dab and Wring, Flick and Press. Those words could just as easily describe the different kinds of strokes a painter or drawer makes.

Illustration from Sketches of the "Scales", 1920s (?), by Rudolf von Laban

Illustration from Sketches of the “Scales”, 1920s (?), by Rudolf von Laban

For an artist attempting to describe movement, it’s all about the flow of the hand, the rhythm and quality of the line.  The Charlotte Trowbridge sketch below is made in response to the dance of Martha Graham, seen here previously in one of Gjon Mili’s stroboscopic studies.

Martha Graham's "Letter to the World", 1940, by Charlotte Trowbridge

Martha Graham’s “Letter to the World”, 1940, by Charlotte Trowbridge 

This understanding of the expressive power of curved lines is essential in the art of cartoonists and animators.

Illustration from "Advanced Animation", 1947, by Preston Blair

Line of Action, illustration from “Advanced Animation”, 1947, by Preston Blair

Monkey Concepts 2 for "Kung Fu Panda", 2008 film, artwork by Nicholas Marlet

Monkey Concepts 2 for “Kung Fu Panda”, 2008 film, artwork by Nicholas Marlet

Dance photographers also look for those distinctive contours.  Below are two pieces from Lois Greenfield, perhaps the most famous dance photographer of our time.  Greenfield uses strobe lighting (single, not multiple, flashes) to capture the peak moment of a movement, that instant at the top of a leap or the ultimate arc of a gesture.  She also frequently employs the movement of fabrics, hair, or, below, flour (?), frozen in an instant, to magnify physicality with pure physics.

Sham Mosher, 1995, photo by Lois Greenfield

Sham Mosher, 1995, photo by Lois Greenfield

Odara Jaeali-Nash/Philadanco, 2007, photo by Lois Greenfield

Odara Jaeali-Nash/Philadanco, 2007, photo by Lois Greenfield

Greenfield’s shots are always frozen, perfectly sharp.  Other dance photographers use longer exposures to show movement with motion blur.  The challenge with motion blur is to find just the right amount – too little just looks like a mistake, while too much makes the figure disappear.

Motion (one from a series), 2012, photo by Bill Wadman

Motion (one from a series), 2012, photo by Bill Wadman

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Motion (one from a series), 2012, photo by Bill Wadman

In the picture below, long exposure blurs are combined with strobe bursts to givc crisp renditions of the extremes of the sequence.

The Red Mistress, 2012, photo by Benjamin Von Wong

The Red Mistress, 2012, photo by Benjamin Von Wong 

So far we’ve seen movement expressed through blurs, stroboscopic multiple images, and expressive lines.  It can also be shown by distortion.  Look at the tire in the photo below.  It seems to lean forward with effort, while the spectators in the background lean in the opposite direction.  This is the effect of a slit shutter, a gap that moves across the frame, exposing parts of it sequentially.  In this image, the shutter exposes the bottom of the frame first and moves upward through a brief interval of time.  The racing car is moving as the shutter goes up, so the upper part of the wheel, which is exposed later, has moved further to the right than the lower part of the wheel that was exposed earlier.  The spectators bend to the left because the camera is panning to the right to try to keep up with the movement of the car, but it isn’t panning as fast as the car is moving.

Grand Prix of the Automobile Club of France, 1911, photo by Jacques Henri Lartigue

Grand Prix of the Automobile Club of France, 1911, photo by Jacques Henri Lartigue 

The “slit scan” shutter is the principle behind the “photo finish” camera.  Such a camera has a slit shutter centered on the finish line of a race.  As the racers approach the line, a photo is made with the shutter opening remaining stationary, while the film moves across in the same direction as the racers. This produces a photograph in which the horizontal dimension shows not space, but time.  Every vertical slice of this photo represents the same vertical slice of space – the finish line – but further to the right is earlier in time, and further to the left is later. The background looks like a streak because it is the same slice of space spread out right to left.  The runners appear distorted because different parts of their bodies are recorded at different times.

Harrison Dillard Winning the 100 Meter Dash at the Olympics, 1948, photo-finish photo

Harrison Dillard Winning the 100 Meter Dash at the Olympics, 1948, photo-finish photo

Some photographers have used slit-scan cameras of this kind to create artistic studies of movement.  If you stuck your hand in a scanner or photocopier and waved it as the scanner moved across, you’d be doing basically the same thing that’s happening in these photos.  The resultant image would show your fingers bending zigzag as the scanner moves laterally through time.

Priscilla Electric Lodge #47-1, 2007, photo by Jay Mark Johnson

Priscilla Electric Lodge #47-1, 2007, photo by Jay Mark Johnson

Temporal Form no. 11, c. 2006, photo by Ansen Seale

Temporal Form no. 11, c. 2006, photo by Ansen Seale

The below images are made by digitally combining “10,000 individual photographs of a dancer”.  I don’t know exactly what that means, but I presume the images are frames from an ultra-high-speed camera such as those used to produce those ultra slow motion videos of bursting water balloons and the like, and that these images are somehow digitally combined.  The result has the smoothness of the blur photographs combined with the sharpness of the stroboscopic images or the slit-scan images.

Nude #6, 2012, photo by Shinichi Maruyama

Nude #6, 2012, photo by Shinichi Maruyama

Nude #4, 2012, photo by Shinichi Maruyama

Nude #4, 2012, photo by Shinichi Maruyama 

The photographer Adam Fuss makes large scale photograms, images made by placing objects on top of film and exposing it directly to light, so that it records the shadow of the object. He uses water to transform the movement of the subject into ripples that show how its movement affects the space around it. It’s a beautiful way to show a snake, or a baby, not as a thing, but as a force in the energy field.

Untitled, 1998, photogram by Adam Fuss

Untitled, 1998, photogram by Adam Fuss

Invocation, 1992, photo by Adam Fuss

Invocation, 1992, photo by Adam Fuss

All the illustrations in this post were found on the web.  Clicking on the photos will take you to the pages where I found them, and often to larger versions, additional work by the same artists, or further information placing the works in historical context or explaining the techniques used.

2013/01/25

Working Big – Part 2: Weaving with Bodies

Explorer, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Explorer, 2010, aquarelle crayon on black gessoed canvas, 72″ x 72″, by Fred Hatt

In last month’s post, “Working Big – Part 1”, I shared a selection of large figure drawings done at or near life-size. Over the last decade I’ve also been doing large-scale drawings with multiple overlapping figures.

In the Drawing Life post “Time and Line”, I wrote about how I arrived at this approach, and how it relates to my earliest creative impulses. I wrote:

The cubists were trying to move beyond the limitations of the pictorial or photographic view by showing their subject from multiple angles simultaneously, suggesting the third spatial dimension not by the traditional way of projection or perspective, but by fragmentation. In these drawings, I’m fragmenting the fourth dimension, time, to bring it onto the plane and into the frame.

On my portfolio site I describe these drawings as “chaos compositions”, and briefly describe the process as follows:

Chaos Compositions emerge from a two-phase process: first generating a chaotic field through a response to movement, followed by working to reveal order hidden within this chaos.

I work on the floor, crawling over the large sheet and covering it with overlapping sketches of movement or quick poses taken by a model-collaborator. Once the drawing reaches a certain density, like a tangle of threads, I begin to work on carving a structure out of this undifferentiated energy field. I bring some of the layers of drawing forward by adding depth and weight to the forms, and push others into the background or into abstraction. I alternate between crawling on the drawing, where individual lines can be followed like paths, and standing back to get a sense of overall form and balance.

What is expressed in these works is not a concept or a personal feeling, but something unconceived, a spirit that emerges from the moment, from the interaction of artist and model and environment.

Several chaos compositions are included in the gallery “Time and Motion Drawings” on my portfolio site.

Still more posts about this process are linked in connection with some of the drawings below. As you can see, I’ve written fairly extensively about this way of working, and you can follow those links to read all about it if you wish. Here I’ll just share a selection of these pieces, with some unstructured thoughts about what these odd drawings mean to me.

End in Ice, 2012, by Fred Hatt

End in Ice, 2012, watercolor on paper, 38″ x 50″, by Fred Hatt

Each model embodies a certain particular essence, a range of qualities that express the way his or her self and structure exist in the world.

Follower, 2006, by Fred Hatt

Follower, 2006, aquarelle crayon on black gessoed canvas, 72″ x 72″, by Fred Hatt

The curves of the body in all its different attitudes become waves in a field of energy. My drawing surface becomes a sensitive membrane that receives these vibrations.

Colt, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Colt, 2011, aquarelle crayon on paper, 37″ x 48″, by Fred Hatt

Each piece is a portrait of one model. These are not different bodies sharing a setting, but different moments exposed on the same emulsion.

Ruminate, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Ruminate, 2011, aquarelle crayon on paper, 36″ x 60″, by Fred Hatt

To look at these drawings is not to look at a picture, but to fall into a vortex, a field of chaotic forces.

Biome, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Biome, 2011, aquarelle crayon on paper, 37″ x 48″, by Fred Hatt

By finding and following the lines that define the overlapping bodies and faces, we find our way through the maze of the drawing. For me this experience is metaphorical, for in the field of forces that is the world, it is our own bodies and identities that ground us and give us continuity.

Contain, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Contain, 2011, aquarelle crayon on paper, 36″ x 66″, by Fred Hatt

I want the viewer of these drawings to get some flavor of the experience I have when drawing them, an experience of surrendering to complexity but discovering clarity in the body and its life force.

Verso, 2008, by Fred Hatt

Verso, 2008, aquarelle crayon on paper, 48″ x 60″, by Fred Hatt

The chaotic nature of the world is inherent to its beauty. Geological and biological forms, clouds and galaxies, grow out of the infinite complexity of interacting energies and interdependent beings.

Hold, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Hold, 2011, aquarelle crayon on paper, 37″ x 48″, by Fred Hatt

To grasp the universe is to lose the self in the moment. It is an experience I seek again and again, with a crayon in my hand.

Twists, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Twists, 2010, aquarelle crayon on paper, 48″ x 50″, by Fred Hatt

(The image above is deconstructed into its component figures in the post “Reverse Engineering a Drawing”)

Awakening, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Awakening, 2011, aquarelle crayon on paper, 37″ x 48″, by Fred Hatt

I don’t tell my models how to move, but let them find their own poses. I am not concerned with realistic rendering, but with the qualities of the curves and the forms of energy they seem to call up from the potent void of negative space. I am attempting to see beyond the surface of things.

Hero, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Hero, 2010, aquarelle crayon on paper, 48″ x 60″, by Fred Hatt

(The drawing above is included in the post  “Finishing Touches”, where I explore the development of the negative spaces in several chaos compositions.)

Water Cycle, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Water Cycle, 2011, aquarelle crayon on paper, 37″ x 48″, by Fred Hatt

When I am drawing, I am close to the large paper and cannot see the overall pattern. I am down in it, exploring whatever passage I have found for the moment. Later, looking at the drawing from a distance, I see it abstractly, as veins of color in a crystal, or as objects in a whirlwind. Then the eye discovers a face or part of a body, and that is an opening into the image, which can be traveled like a path through the woods, or like a strand of thought through the din of the chattering mind.

Gaze Angle, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Gaze Angle, 2009, aquarelle crayon on paper, 48″ x 60″, by Fred Hatt

(The phases of development of the piece above are detailed in the post “Composing on the Fly”.)

End in Fire, 2012, by Fred Hatt

End in Fire, 2012, watercolor, oil pastel, and aquarelle crayon on paper, 38″ x 50″, by Fred Hatt

These works, even more than my other drawings, are products of close collaboration with great models who share their own creative expression in the work. The models who posed for the large drawings in this post are Kuan, Pedro, Stephanie, Jillian, Madelyn, Neil, Milvia, Jeremiah, Kristin, and Jessi.

2013/01/13

Portraits of La MaMa

Ellen Stewart, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Ellen Stewart, 2011, by Fred Hatt

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, one of the world’s great laboratories for cultivating new talent and exploring new directions in the performing arts, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2011.  Eric Marciano, an independent filmmaker for whom I have often worked as a videographer, produced some video pieces about the history and future of this great creative hothouse, and he asked me to draw portraits of a few of the key people interviewed or profiled in the clips, and to animate the process of creating the drawings.  Eric’s company, American Montage, recently posted the resulting clips to  its Vimeo page, so I can share them here with my blog readers.  The video is embedded at the bottom of this post (but those who receive the blog by email subscription will have to follow the link to see it on the web).

These drawings could not be done from life, as I always prefer in portrait drawing, but had to be done from photographs, or, in most cases, freeze-frames from video interviews.  They also had to be made to fit the wide 16 by 9 aspect ratio used for high-definition video, not the frame I would usually select for a portrait.  This means much of the frame would be background, so I’d need to develop background designs for each face.  I set up an easel with a camera on a tripod behind it, and as I worked on the drawings I stopped frequently to snap photographs of the work in progress.  The photographs were used to make animations of the drawings as they come into being, layer by layer.

In “Faces of Figureworks“, the exhibition featuring self-portraits by fifty artists currently on view (through March 3, 2013) at Brooklyn’s Figureworks Gallery, I’m showing a new self-portrait drawing alongside a similar, but slower, animation of that drawing’s evolvement, displayed on a digital photo frame.

I remember being fascinated as a kid by Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1956 film Le mystère Picasso, in which the famous artist painted on back-lit glass panels so the development and alteration of the works is recorded as it happens in time.  It made me aware of drawing as a time-based artform.  While we usually see drawings or paintings only in their finished form, their creation is a process of movement and change.  Many of the directions I have explored in my own work, including painting as a performance, and many posts here on Drawing Life, have been my attempts to explore my own process, and to share that process with others.

In this post I’ll share the drawings I made for the La MaMa video, with stills of each drawing in its finished form, and brief introductions of the subjects, and at the bottom of the post I’ll share the animated clip.

So many famous writers, performers, directors, designers, and composers have been associated with La MaMa that a small selection of portraits like this is necessarily a somewhat arbitrary sampling, but one name is essential.  La MaMa was the creation and lifelong project of Ellen Stewart, also known as Mama, whose portrait leads this post above.  Stewart, a fashion designer, started La MaMa as a performance café in 1961, a supportive place for the burgeoning creative experimentation of 1960’s New York and soon a magnet for artists from all over the world who were drawn to its cross-cultural playground of theatrical magic.

Andrei Serban, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Andrei Serban, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Stage director Andrei Serban is known for innovative approaches to classic texts with enveloping theatrical pageantry.

John Kelly, 2011, by Fred Hatt

John Kelly, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Artist, singer and dancer John Kelly transforms his persona to explore the worlds and psyches of Egon Schiele, Joni Mitchell, and Caravaggio, among others.

Peter Brook, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Peter Brook, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Since the 1950’s, director Peter Brook has been making spectacular, visceral theater and film with an international cast of collaborators.

Elizabeth Swados, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Elizabeth Swados, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Composer, writer, and director Elizabeth Swados makes exciting music and theater, crossing every boundary of style and genre.

Chris Tanner, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Christopher Tanner, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Visual artist and performer Christopher Tanner approaches everything he does with extravagant maximalism.

Mia Yoo, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Mia Yoo, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Mia Yoo, a former actress in La MaMa’s Great Jones Repertory Company, is Ellen Stewart’s successor, the Artistic Director of La MaMa ETC since Stewart’s death in early 2011.

And here’s the film, courtesy of Eric Marciano and American Montage, Inc.  There is a glitch in the first clip, where Peter Brook’s background disappears and reappears at the end, but this should give you a good look at how my drawing process works.  I believe the music is an excerpt from an Iggy Pop song.  If you don’t see the video here, follow this link.

2012/12/31

My 2012 in Images

Drawing, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Drawing, 2012, by Fred Hatt

As the calendar rolls over, I looked back through my photos from the year 2012, to remember what I saw and did and made, and I chose some images that stick with me – images that haven’t previously appeared on Drawing Life.

Northampton Tree, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Northampton Tree, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Early in 2012, I made several short trips, visiting my brother Frank in Western Massachusetts, my friends April and Paul in Connecticut, and my friend Alex in upstate New York, giving me a chance to experience quieter, more open environments than my usual habitat of urban hustle and bustle.  (In the photo above you can see Frank in profile in the lower left corner.)

Goshen Morning, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Goshen Morning, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

I love to look at trees in the winter, when their elaborate branching networks are exposed.  Branching patterns are among the fundamental organic forms, seen not just in trees but also in blood vessels and nerves, in lightning, in river deltas, in anything that involves permeating flow.

Fallen Tree in Winter Stream, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Fallen Tree in Winter Stream, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Look at the branching toes of an emu, and watch how the huge bird moves, contemplating its kinship to its ancient ancestors, the dinosaurs.

Emu Foot, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Emu Foot, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Look at the nobility of this strong animal, an alpaca, with its enormous crystalline eyes.

Alpaca, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Alpaca, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Here’s another mammalian profile – mine – in a self-portrait photo taken in one of the projection booths at the Museum of Modern Art.  I work as a freelance film projectionist, a proud member of the Projectionists’ Union Local 306.

Fred in the booth, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Fred in the booth, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

I live in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn.  The neighborhood has recently seen a huge influx of hipsters and yuppies, but the old traditions are still maintained – like the tradition of throwing one’s sneakers to hang from the overhead wiring.

Shoes on the Wire, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Shoes on the Wire, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Religious displays and holiday symbols are shown everywhere, an expression of identity, values, and sentiment.

Saint and Savior, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Saint and Savior, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Ghost Bikes“, painted white and bedecked with flowers, are placed as monuments to bicyclists killed by drivers by the friends of the deceased.  This one has a plaque above it (not shown here) that indicates it has been there since 2005.

Ghost Bike, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Ghost Bike, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Often my eye is captured by simple street scenes.  For a fleeting moment, the arrangement of colors and elements become something wonderful.  A ready camera and quick reflexes can sometimes grab one of those moments for more leisurely aesthetic contemplation.

Girl and Flowers, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Girl and Flowers, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

H

Houston Street at Night, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

If you see something, say something” is the slogan in public service advertisements encouraging citizens to report suspicious things to authorities.  Big city people see so many odd things all the time they get pretty blasé – it’s all just “something, something.”  At least that’s how it appears in these partially stripped-away stickers on the stair risers.

Something Something, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Something Something, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

I went to a party on the rooftop of some friends who live on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, and I was able to take two shots showing the skyline of Lower Manhattan behind that of Downtown Brooklyn, in the afternoon and at twilight.

View from Flatbush Avenue, by Day and by Dusk, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

View from Flatbush Avenue, by Day and by Dusk, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Later I went to the one-year birthday party for the twins of my friends Yuliya and Yevgeniy  (portrait drawings of the twins are at the bottom of this post).  They were staying at a friend’s place on a placid, mirrorlike lake.

Lake Panorama, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Mirror Lake, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

In June I came back from work late one evening to see a house in my neighborhood engulfed in flames.

House Fire, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

House Fire, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Firefighters in Smoke, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Firefighters in Smoke, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Later in the summer I visited my parents in the town in Oklahoma where I grew up.  I went to look at the house I lived in when I was in my 20’s, and found it like this, a charred shell.  I don’t know the story behind this.

Burned House on East Maple, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Burned House on East Maple, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

In the middle of the summer I went to Sirius Rising, a festival in Western New York where I have long taught workshops and done art and body painting.  I found this extravagant caterpillar crawling across my painting drop cloth.

Horned Caterpillar, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Horned Caterpillar, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Here’s one of my body paintings from the festival.

Flaming Rose, 2012, bodypaint and photo by Fred Hatt

Flaming Rose, 2012, bodypaint and photo by Fred Hatt

And here’s a sketch of the branches of the crabapple tree under which I sat to paint on people.

Foliage, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Foliage, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Later in the summer, my friend the dancer Kristin Hatleberg had been granted studio time in the city to pursue a project with dancers exploring different ways of capturing the experience of movement, through words, through photography and video, and through drawing, and then responding to those other media again through movement.  Just my type of thing!

Fred Drawing Kristin Dancing, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Fred Drawing Kristin Dancing, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt (tripod and intervalometer)

In the fall I visited Alex in the Catskills again.  We went to Kaaterskill Falls and took pictures of the waterfalls, of people and dogs playing in the falls, and of each other.

Alex with Camera, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Alex with Camera, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Fred with Camera, 2012, photo by Alex Kahan

Fred with Camera, 2012, photo by Alex Kahan

I also found some beautiful things to photograph on a trip to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, with my friend Corinna and her little daughter Autumn.

Red, Black and Green, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Red, Black and Green, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Lotus Leaves, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Lotus Leaves, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

This fall was the season of Hurricane Sandy, a gigantic “superstorm” that wrecked the East coastline of the U.S. with surging flood waters.  I took this picture of a tree in my neighborhood as it was being whipped by Sandy’s turbulent winds.

Storm Winds, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Storm Winds, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

My own neighborhood suffered no severe damage, but the next morning most of the leaves of the trees were on the ground.

After the Storm, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

After the Storm, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Things like wooden fences were down too.  Lower Manhattan had no electricity for most of a week and many low-lying areas (including many parts of the city full of artists’ studios and art galleries) were flooded.  I was lucky to live on slightly higher ground.

Broken Fence, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Broken Fence, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Here’s the house on my block that burned in June (see pictures above).  The wrecked frame of the house had been shrouded in a blue tarp.  Sandy shredded that tarp up pretty good.

Tattered Tarp on Burned House, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Tattered Tarp on Burned House, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Many Subway lines were flooded.  Transit Authority workers put in a heroic effort to get the trains back running as quickly as possible after the storm, because public transit really is the essential life blood of the city.  For about a week, I had to walk a mile to catch an alternative train into Manhattan, because my local line under the river was submerged.  The alternative line crosses the Williamsburg Bridge, and waiting for the train I captured this urban sunset vision.

Williamsburg Bridge Trains, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Williamsburg Bridge Trains, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

The hurricane was followed a few days later by a nor’easter, an autumn lashing of wet snow and cold rain.  I took this picture with on-camera flash, so the snowflakes near the camera look like big, out-of-focus white blobs.

Wet Snow, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Wet Snow, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Much of my artwork from 2012 has already appeared on Drawing Life.  I noticed in looking through my images from the year that I did a lot of body painting and some light painting photography this year – enough to warrant their own posts some time soon.  As the new year comes in, I think it’s appropriate to finish this post with an image from “Gaia Rebirth“, a collaborative performance by a collective of musicians and dancers called the Artist Dream Family, for which I did some blacklight body painting early in December.  May 2013 be a year of rebirth and renewal for us all!

Gaia Rebirth, 2012, performance by the Artist Dream Family, bodypaint and photo by Fred Hatt

Gaia Rebirth, 2012, performance by the Artist Dream Family, bodypaint and photo by Fred Hatt

The dancers seen in this photo are, from left to right, Pia Monique Murray, Goussy Celestin, and Zen Marie Holmes.

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