Claire Elizabeth Barratt in Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

One of the most venerable functions of art is to transform the environment, to create a sacred space or a magical moment, to inspire the imagination or to open the mind to contemplate mysteries.  This may be the impulse behind the painted caves of the Ice Age, and it is why places to pray and places to play are often designed as majestic spaces, or filled with images or music, beautiful light, fine materials, costumed performers, ritualized actions, and sensual delights such as incense and candles.

It is a common conceit of modern society to think we’re past all that, or to segregate such things to churches and carnivals and festivals, to dismiss them as kid stuff or god stuff, therefore not real.  The paradigm for the contemporary art gallery is the industrial space with plain white walls and bright track lighting, the better to display work that is formally reductionist, coldly conceptual, or ironic, and of course, always very, very expensive.

Naturally  there’s a counter-movement.  I’ve always been drawn to alternatives to the white box gallery, and have mostly shown work in unusual venues or as part of collaborative multimedia happenings.  One of the organizers of such events is Claire Elizabeth Barratt.  She’s a dancer, performance artist, and installation artist, but I’d say her real art form is to bring diverse artists together in loose collaborative events that aim to create enchanted spaces.  Under the banner of Cilla Vee – Life Arts, she’s produced countless events in a wide variety of environments.

In June, 2004 and again in August, 2005, I created live ink drawings as part of Human Clay, a production Claire calls a “Motion Sculpture Movement Installation”, melding elements of visual art, dance, and live music, all improvised in the moment.  It was what some people call an “ambient performance.”  A variant on “ambient music“, this term generally describes an event with a designated run time but no beginning, middle or end, so the audience can come and go at will, taking a momentary taste or settling into the experience for as long as they wish.

Human Clay was done in one of the 42^nd Street storefront window spaces hosted by the NYC arts organization Chashama.  (I’ve written previously about solo drawing performances I did in Chashama’s windows.)  In this space, people could see the performance through the window from the public sidewalk, or they could come in and sit down on the opposite side of the stage, with the city street as backdrop.  I believe the performance went on for four or five hours each time it was done.

In this post I’m presenting pictures of all the drawings I made during the 2004 and 2005 performances of Human Clay, interspersed with photos of the 2004 performance that I took during breaks from drawing.

Hisayasu Takashio, sculptor, in Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Claire’s description of Human Clay calls it “a constant shifting of landscapes composed of human, rope and twisted tree branch sculptures. The sculptor fervently constructs, molds and forms these elements in a race against time before they give in to gravity and gradually melt towards the ground.”  The sculptor, shown above, is Brooklyn-based Hisayasu Takashio.

Fred Hatt drawing in Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2005, photo by Marc Dale

While the sculptor was moving his dancers and objects into ever-shifting arrangements, I was using them as models for brush sketches.  I had hung long strips of white paper throughout the interior of the space, and over the few hours that the performance went on, I recorded my impressions of the fleeting tableaux with my dancing brush.  As each pose was set, it would only hold for a few seconds before heaviness or the impulse to move caused the fragile structure to collapse, so I had to use my quick-drawing skills.  There’s a shot of me drawing, above, and the finished panel below.  As you can see, the drawings are quite large, so I could move the brush freely, and didn’t have to worry about crowding the paper too quickly.

Drama, left panel, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

Normally, a sculptor’s work is long-lasting, but this sculptor was working with living bodies and transient arrangements.  It was up to me to capture what I could, covering the walls with my linear impressions of the slow, shifting sands of the dance.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

The ritual of continuous, slow-paced resculpting was sustained by quiet, trancy music.  Marianne Giosa, a soulful trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist and dancer was performing for the 2004 version.

Drama, right panel, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

The elements the sculptor had to work with were ropes: tough but limp, branches: stiff and serpentine, and living human bodies that could combine all those qualities.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

The performances maintained the same pace and substance for the full duration – no development, no narrative.  But when I look at the drawings, I can’t help but see dramatic events.  There’s no clear plotline you can read.  It’s like looking at the illustrations to a story book in a language you don’t understand.  The imagination is stimulated to fill in the blanks.

Youth, 2 panels, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2004

The dancers were smeared with clay, which gave them a crusty patina like cracked plaster.  Some of Claire’s other Motion Sculpture events are wildly colorful.  This one is austere, but with a strong dose of nature’s chaotic textures.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

The sticks and ropes added simple but powerful recurring visual motifs to the ever-changing compositions.  Look at the crossed twisty branches above, and in the drawing below, and in the photo below that.

Altar, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

To me the branches evoke the writhing life force, and when the dancers are crossed and suspended and tangled up, my imagination sees sacrifice and struggle.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

I had never met the sculptor before these performances, but Claire must have known his wriggly lines and mine would work in harmony!

Fire, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

Always slow, as if in a trance, there is constant change.  A journey through a forest.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Gestures and attitudes, all the expressions of the human body.

Gesticulate, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

Contact, sensuality, struggle.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Spreading out, rising up, sinking down, curling inward.

Relation, 3 panels, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2004

Pose of a hero, a warrior.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Strife, stress, conflict.

Hitting, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

Pulling apart and holding together.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Stride, strive, strike.

Arise, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

Angle, angel, anger, danger.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Arise, arouse, arrows, errors.

Victory, 3 panels, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2004

Breathe, bathe, incline, align.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Allay, ally, alloy.

Dance, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

In balance, imbalance.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Every character finds its extreme expression, and its norm.

Individuation, left panel, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

Keep the clay wet, to keep it supple.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Curl, curve, curse, cure.

Individuation, right panel, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

Everything tends to come to rest.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Every body plays many roles as the endless dance goes on.

Fold, 2 panels, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2004

We are the stuff of stars and of earth.  We shine and we sink down, and new life is always emerging from death.

Image from Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatto

This ritual has no story, no structure, no destination.  It goes on and on, and when the time comes, it ends.  In the meantime, it evokes every quality of life, but there is no definitive meaning.  This is my experience of this piece, from my viewpoint as a person who looks and loves and draws.  I’m sure Claire, the sculptor, the dancers, and the musicians all have their own rich and very personal experience of the piece.

Encounter, 2 horizontal panels joined, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2004

I wonder how the audience experienced it.  I imagine there was quite a range, from the passerby who thinks “Look at the weirdos” to the person who gets sucked into the trance and comes in to sit rapt for an hour or more.  As for me, I want to do more things like this.

Audience on the street watching Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Here are the credits for the performance:  Human Clay with sculptor Hisayasu Takashio, action gesture drawing by Fred Hatt, sound by Marianne Giosa, Judith Berkson and/or Sabine Arnaud, presented at Chashama 42nd Street Storefront, NYC, June 2004 & August 2005.  Dancers in 2004 (those pictured in these photos) were Claire Elizabeth Barratt, Pedro Jimenez, Jill Frere, and Kazu Kulken.  Dancers in 2005 were Claire Elizabeth Barratt, Maria Pirone, Jill Frere, and Judy Canestrelli.

The drawings from 2004 are sumi ink on paper 36″ wide, varying lengths.  The 2005 drawings are sumi ink on paper 48″ wide, also varying lengths.

Art Seeds performance drawing #4, 30 seconds, 2012, by Fred Hatt

A drawing or painting is an object, an arrangement of marks on a surface, inert and mute.  So what do we mean when we speak of a picture having dynamism or tension, energy or lyricism?  There could be multiple factors.  Movement may be pictorially implied.  Shapes and colors may be arranged in ways that suggest rhythmic repetition or create tensions of weight or light that, like certain chords in music, predict a resolving change.

For me, the most direct path to capturing energy in pictorial visual art is simply to approach drawing or painting as an art of movement.  The brush strokes or pencil marks are tracings of the movement of the artist’s hand.  The hand dances what the eyes see or what the spirit feels.  Movement is the most direct way of expressing grace or violence, serenity or frolic.  A drawing doesn’t move, but it is a product of movement.  The kinetics of its making affect the quality of its marks in a way that viewers can feel.

Direct gestural expression is something drawing and painting have that still photography generally lacks.  For me, that’s a compelling reason to focus on that aspect of art, in this age glutted with mechanically reproduced images.

A longstanding exercise for me is sketching dancers as they move.  It’s one of those things that’s almost impossible to do, like getting a sweet sound out of a violin, and for that reason a great thing to practice, practice, practice.  In this post I’ll share a few recent examples of the rough and spontaneous results of this pursuit.

The thirty-second ink-brush drawing that heads this post was made during a recent performance organized by my friend the dancer Kayoko Nakajima.  She and Carly Czach performed improvised dance in timed intervals, interspersed with similarly timed intervals in which several artists made drawings in response to the movement they’d just witnessed.  Kayoko’s blog for the project shows the resulting drawings of four artists (including me), and the following video by Charles Dennis shows excerpts from the performance, so you can get an idea what the dance was like and how the audiences watched the drawing as well as the dance.

The form of dance that Carly and Kayoko are doing here is called Contact Improvisation.  Notice how the dancers pull or push each other.  Each dancer is feeling her weight in dynamic relation to the other.  The principles of Contact Improv are closely related to the martial art Aikido.  One dancer may push into the other, and the other may respond by redirecting a straight move into a curved one.  One may feel the other’s weight and roll under or push upward.  There’s a constant give-and-take, a shifting flow in which every movement is a transformation of the movement that feeds into it.  Although my drawing hand is dancing solo, not pushing against another hand, I try to capture this feeling of each movement of the brush arising out of the preceding movement.

Art Seeds performance drawing #6, 8 minutes, 2012, by Fred Hatt

In this performance, periods of drawing alternated with periods of dancing, so the drawings are not made during direct observation of the movement.  Thus they capture a memory of motion, not a response in the moment.  The figurative elements in the drawing above also reflect memories rather than direct perceptions.  The brush flows following the aftertaste of a spinal curve, and that curve shifts into the helical analogue of a remembered rotation.

Kayoko’s post features several drawings each by Felipe Galindo, Ivana Basic, Michael Imlay, and myself.  It’s interesting to compare the different ways each of us instinctively channeled the dance into our drawings.  Felipe, an illustrator, focuses on relationships and indicates the directions of movement with arrows and arcs.  In Ivana‘s drawings, the contours of bodies merge with the contours of looping movement, and the bodies don’t just contact, but merge and interpenetrate.  Michael takes the sinuous quality of the dance and projects it imaginatively in biomorphic shapes and suggestions of musical structure.

The night before Kayoko’s performance, I got myself warmed up for it at Cross Pollination, an occasional event at Green Space Studio in Queens where artists draw, dancers move, and musicians play in a freeform interactive space.  These drawings are made in direct observation of dancers, not by memory, though the movement is generally quick enough that once an impression travels from eye to hand to paper it’s a memory anyway.  The next two watercolor sketches are from Cross Pollination.

Tensegrity, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Expressing energy with brush or pencil is not so much about putting the maximum amount of energy into the effort.  In a recent life drawing class I noticed one of the artists scratching away madly, his face screwed up with tension.  But when I looked at his drawing it was scribbly and diffuse.  It expressed something of the physical effort of the artist, but nothing of the quality or presence of the model.  The key to capturing that more subtle energy is the clear focus of the artist’s movement in the work.  It’s like the difference between the flailing of a drunkard and the efficient punch of a martial artist.  The first may expend more raw frenzy, but it’s the second that will knock you out.

Stances of Rest, 2012, by Fred Hatt

I try to be immersed in the experience of perceiving the bodies, feeling the flow of movement and of form.  The way a muscle curls around from the shoulder blade to the top of the arm bone is not so different, when you follow it smoothly, from the way one person reaches out and draws another into an embrace.  Because my brush is moving in a state of grace, I experience everything as a unified current.  It’s obvious that movement is something that flows, but when my mind and hand are dancing, I understand that form is also something that flows.

I try to bring that kind of perception to my practice of life drawing.  The body is a dynamic structure, not a static one.  Every part exists in a relationship of tension or balance with other parts of the body and of its environment.  When the drawing brush freely explores how one part connects with another through movement, the drawings capture some of the sense of the life force that we perceive in a living being.

Chuck, eight quick poses, grid of four watercolor sketches, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Chuck, above, and Kuan, below, are models that give their all in the quick (1-2 minute) poses.  Chuck is an artist whose own paintings show a wonderful sense of movement, sometimes soaring, sometimes tangled.  Kuan is a dancer and choreographer.  She moves with great clarity and takes still poses that look like frozen instants of explosive action.  Their quick poses are wondrous things to see.  But they are so fleeting!  Only by following the flow of the form with the movement of my brush can I capture some impression of the energy they share with us.

Kuan, sixteen quick poses, grid of watercolor sketches, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Kayoko Nakajima and Carly Czach, dancing Contact Improvisation, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

On Saturday, February 18, I was drawing as part of this performance by one of my longtime collaborators, Kayoko Nakajima.  Kayoko is a dancer and a deep student of the anatomy of movement.  Here are all the details:

 ”ARt Seeds to ARt Sprouts Project 2012″

Concept: Kayoko Nakajima

Sound Suit, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Sometimes there’s something I’d like to write about, but I don’t have good visuals to accompany it.  And sometimes I have images I’d like to share, but can’t think of much to say about them.  I’ve always considered the combination of words and pictures to be the essence of Drawing Life as a blog.  Here I’m going to talk about some ideas that are close to the heart of my artist’s philosophy, my intuitive sense of the moment we humans find ourselves in.  I’ll intersperse these ideas with some of my recent doodles.  There’s no direct correspondence between the pictures and the words, except of course that doodling is what I often do while listening to someone drone on and on, and if I’m going to drone on in text, I may as well break up the words with some of my wiggly, loopy lines.

Multitask, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

In 1999-2000, the American Museum of Natural History in New York hosted a temporary exhibit called “Body Art:  Marks of Identity”.  It was a survey of tattooing, piercing, scarification, body painting and other kinds of body modification across many cultures and through history.  My friend Matty Jankowski, a tattoo artist and a collector and scholar of materials and artifacts related to the history of body arts, was one of the consultants to the curators of the exhibit.  Thanks to Matty, a few of my own body painting images were included in a portion of the show devoted to contemporary body art.

Herald Angel, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Matty also worked with the education department of the museum to present some special programs.  One day there was a kind of open house for the public to learn about body art from artists.  There was a henna artist, a tattooist, a piercer, and I was there as a body painter.  There was a slide show, and all of the artists gave brief presentations on their particular crafts.  People attending the workshop were given the opportunity to try out an electric tattoo needle on a honeydew melon.  The henna artist and I had our materials on hand to give temporary body art to anyone who wanted it.

Bug & Oak, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

There were a lot of parents with young kids at the event, and many of them formed an orderly queue at my body painting table.  Most of my previous experience of body painting was with adults, in my own studio or in art galleries or performance settings, but that day I had a long line of little kids, with their parents, waiting their turn.  As I was painting, I heard the parents talking to their kids:  “What do you want?  Just think about what you want and tell the man what you want?  You can get whatever you want.  Do you want a butterfly?  Do you want a dragon?  Decide what you want and the man will paint it for you.”  Kids were presenting their tiny arms and asking me to paint Furbys or Pokemon characters I’d never seen before.  A small minority, maybe one in ten, would show some curiosity, would ask questions about my paints or my experiences painting people, or would say, “Just paint whatever comes to you,” or “Go wild.”

Cornucopia, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Listening to the endless litany of “What do you want?”, I realized that indoctrination into the consumer mindset wasn’t just accomplished through TV commercials and mass marketing campaigns bankrolled by multinational megacorporations.  Parents were actively programming their kids to the idea that everything was about consumer choice and acquisition, about defining desires and having those desires satisfied.  Even such an odd experience as having a strange artist paint on your arm or hand or cheek was reduced to choosing a brand and displaying it.

Sole & Canopy, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Recall that the name of the exhibit was “Body Art:  Marks of Identity.”  The thesis of the curators was that body art was used to mark its wearer as a member of a tribe, to indicate a special cultural role such as warrior or bride.  These children, under the relentless prodding of their parents, were engaging in the modern form of this practice, something the commercial world calls “branding”.  (Of course the term derives from the practice of searing a mark of ownership into the hide of a livestock animal.)  We are encouraged to define ourselves by our choice of symbols, corporate logos, or popular culture.  It is no longer so much about our role in society, but about our status as consumers.

Cretan Goddess, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

The curious minority in my body painting queue hadn’t been steered to see every opportunity as a consumer choice or a branding of their identity.  They saw this as a chance to experience something fresh, to learn something new.

Coral, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

The consumer mindset says “The one who dies with the most toys wins.”  It’s a zero-sum game, a world of winners and losers.  The curious mindset says “We live in a world of inexhaustible wonders.  What will I experience today?”  It is a world of free play, a world of abundance for all.  It is not a zero-sum game because it’s oriented towards experience, not ownership.  One who collects experiences does not deny them to others.

Bicycle, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

We humans are now in the early stages of a great crisis.  The industrial revolution of the past three centuries has allowed the human population to increase tenfold (it has more than doubled just in my lifetime), and has provided to the common person comforts and luxuries once reserved for kings, even luxuries unimagined by kings.  All of this was made possible by fossil fuels – hundreds of millions of years worth of stored energy expended in an explosive orgy – and by an economic system in which constant increase is the only definition of wealth.  For a few centuries it worked, because there were always new natural resources to be discovered, always undeveloped places to develop and unexploited markets to expand into.

Beatrice, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Alas, we are now coming to that inevitable point where the exponential growth curve must become a bell curve, leveling off and sloping back down, if we are to survive.  The earth itself is beginning to assert its limits, to push back against unchecked growth.  Climate change and resource depletion are becoming costly problems that cannot be solved by ever more spending and extraction and ever more complicated technology.  Our economic system, based on lending at interest, needs constant growth, but facing the slowing of real expansion, it is now just blowing bubbles.  The owners of great wealth are trying to hold onto what they have by no longer sharing their bounty with the masses, but this strategy may ultimately fail too, as wealth defined as growth evaporates when growth stops.

Pipe Organ, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Everyone is in denial now, imagining that there is something that will make the material economy grow again.  But we don’t need more growth.  Human population increase needs to slow down.  Expansion in the per capita consumption of energy and natural resources needs to slow down and even begin to contract.  From the standpoint of the capitalist economy, the slowdown of growth is a dire crisis and even a disaster.  From the standpoint of planetary health, the slowdown of growth is an essential correction.

Eye Pop & Face Slap, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

A child’s body grows by leaps and bounds, but when maturity is reached, physical growth slows and stops.  Getting bigger is for childhood, but in adulthood it gives way to spiritual and mental development.  Wisdom, skill and knowledge, the immaterial aspects of the living being, can expand for a lifetime.  Unchecked growth of the organs and tissues in an adult is cancer.

Merkin Raygun, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

There is now widespread agreement that we need to find “sustainable” technologies and ways of life.  Many still seem reluctant to see that a sustainable economy must be a steady-state economy, not one based on constant growth, at least not as regards population and conversion of raw materials into stuff and stuff into trash.

Insect, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

The consumer/industrial economy says profits must get ever bigger.  Every generation must have more material wealth than the one before.  Our stores have become superstores, our houses mansions, our cars trucks, and our bodies obese.

Spaghetti Structure, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Marketing propaganda is so pervasive in our culture that we internalize it.  We base our sense of identity on our consumer choices, and raise our children to be good consumers above all.

Winehouse, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Our highest value is choice.  We associate choice with democracy and the modern way of life.  We have so many choices now we may feel paralyzed by indecision.  Constantly making choices gives us a limited kind of freedom, but it is constrained by the options that are offered to us:  Democrat or Republican, Wal-Mart or Target, paper or plastic.   The more we are focused on these choices the more we can be prevented from imagining what other possibilities are not being put before us.  The more we define ourselves by choices the more we box ourselves into categories the marketers can exploit.

Nutcracker, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

The curious mind is always wide open, finding interest and beauty in whatever it encounters.  It is always engaged with the unknown, asking questions, speculating, wondering.  The curious mind moves through the world on an exploratory path, following beauty and seeking knowledge.  The curious mind tries to maximize flexibility and avoid being boxed in.

Fruit Tree, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Our civilization faces a difficult period as natural limits awaken us from our dream of opulent consumption.  There will be a period of denial, recrimination, rage.  Those of us who have devoted our lives to curiosity and creativity already know there are pleasures deeper and more satisfying than those offered by consumerism.

Secret Language, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

Even as we are forced to cut back, to use less energy and less materials, even as extravagant materialism slips out of the grasp of most people, opportunities for learning and experience will remain abundant.  Creative minds that can ask penetrating questions and imagine fresh solutions will be needed by all.  Curiosity and creativity will see us through stormy times.

 

Stealth, 2011, doodle by Fred Hatt

The doodles that illustrate this post were all made in the last few months.  All are made with Tombow brush markers on letter-sized printer paper.

Bow, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Actor and writer Susan Merson invited me to make sketches at some of the sessions of New York Theatre Intensives, a six-week play development workshop and training program associated with New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre.  Susan likes to get visual artists to respond in their own medium to the creative process of the actors, directors and writers.  The work is shared with the participants and may be used on the organization’s website and/or public presentations.

I attended two sessions there.  The first one was an acting workshop led by Janet Zarish.  I sat at the side of the room and sketched in white crayon on a 9″ x 12″ black pad.  The class began with warm-up exercises, including spine rolls, the game of tag, and slow-motion tag.  Since I’ve done a lot of movement drawing, this part of the class was a natural for me.

Tag, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Following the movement exercises, the acting students stood listening to the instructor.  Their postures show their energetic engagement.

Listen, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Next, various pairs of acting students performed their versions of little playlets.  The acting duos had been given a page or two of bare dialog, and they had to invent a context and back story and work it up into a scene.  They’d play the scene two or three times, with coaching and notes from the acting instructor.  I tried to make simplified personality sketches, essentially caricatures, of the actors playing their parts.  Fleeting expressions and attitudes are hard to catch in a drawing from life!

Copier, 2011, by Fred Hatt

In most of these, I tried to get more than one expression or position for at least one of the characters.  Without knowing the content of the scenes, you can see these as multiple-figure compositions.  Some kind of narrative content is implied in the drawings, but they’re highly ambiguous.  I don’t think anyone could guess much about the actors’ scenes from these sketches, but maybe the sketches could be imagination stimuli.  For instance, I could see the central figures in the one below as a couple’s public composure, while the faces on the edges represent hidden attitudes.

AA Meeting, 2011, by Fred Hatt

This exercise only increased my admiration for the great theatrical illustrator Al Hirschfeld, who spent eight decades at Broadway openings, sketching in a theater seat, and stylizing his impressions of the actors as elegant ink drawings that appeared alongside reviews in the New York Times.  Drawing actors in action is not easy, and I feel my attempts were pretty rough.

Afterlife, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The three sketches above are based on three acting duos’ interpretations of the same playlet, an encounter between two characters with diverging views of their relationship.  I’ve titled the sketches after context choices made by the actors.

The next three sketches are three different interpretations of a second playlet.  This one centers around one character trying to collect a long-overdue debt from the other character.  It was fascinating to observe how different choices and different actors’ personæ completely changed the feeling of the scene.

Hot Dog Park, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Naked Under Hoodie, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The actress below conveyed a particularly vivid sense of awkward nervousness toward her impassive debtor.

Wordvomit, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The acting class instructor, Janet Zarish, threw a lot of ideas at the actors, offering suggestions and modifications aimed at sharpening the characters and punching up the drama.  I was struck by her many crisp, incisive gestures.  I think they reflect her focus on performative clarity.

Instructor, 2011, by Fred Hatt

I sat in on another New York Theatre Intensives session, and will get to those sketches later in this post, but first, a sketch theater entr’acte.  American Independence Day, the fourth of July, fell between the two NYTI classes I attended.  Spring Studio, where I supervise one of the regular figure drawing sessions, hosted a July 4 special with models costumed as historical American characters, including a Revolutionary War era soldier, Buffalo Bill, Harriet Tubman, Pocahontas and Betsy Ross.  These sketches are in marker or pencil on white paper, 18″ x 24″, and all are based on poses held between two minutes and ten minutes.

American History Figures, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Noble Faces, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The models for this session were all what I would describe as character models.  Like character actors, they have distinctive faces, body types and ways of moving and looking that would stimulate the narrative imagination even without the costumes and props.  It’s impossible to draw these models in a generic way, because all of them are so distinctive.

Caretaker, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Small and Tall, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Barricade, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Later that week I went to a “rep class” session, led by Rod Menzies, at New York Theatre Intensives.  The actors did readings of new scenes by playwrights Crystal Skillman and Jason Holtham, with the playwrights present.  I believe part of the function of the session was for the writers to see how their work in progress was understood by the actors, and how it worked in front of an audience.  These drawings are 18″ x 24″ on white paper, in crayon and/or ink and brush.  Here’s the scene in the studio, with the instructor and playwright sitting at the left.

Studio Reading, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Crystal Skillman’s scene was for two actors, and a little longer than the playlets from the acting class, which gave me a better opportunity to study the actors.  The experience was a bit like what I imagine a courtroom artist does.

A Look, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Here’s my impression of the discussion, with the class instructor and the playwright at the left, and some of the students in discussion at the right.  They really did overlap like that, from my viewing position.  I chose to make them transparent.

Watching and Discussing, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Although the actors sitting to read stayed more still than they did in the acting class, where they had memorized their lines, it’s still hard to draw a reading, because the actors have their heads and eyes down at their scripts much of the time, and their facial expressions and energetic engagements with one another tend to be fleeting.  This remained so even after instructor Rod Menzies urged the actors to engage with each other even at the cost of missing lines in the scripts.

Cold Reading, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Model U. N., 2011, by Fred Hatt

Jason Holtham’s scene was about high school students at a Model United Nations simulation conference.  All the characters were named after the nations they were representing in the conference, which allowed the scene to be read on two levels.

Playwright, 2011, by Fred Hatt

I switched to ink and brush for a few sketches.  The brushed ink line is more expressive than the crayon line, but also much more difficult to control.

Characters, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The directions of eyes and eyebrows, and the set of the mouth, are the most immediately readable indicators of emotion and relational role, at least among those that can be captured in a quick sketch that lacks the sound of the voice, the movement of the body, and the narrative developments of the script.

Reactions, 2011, by Fred Hatt

For me, the experience of sketching at these theater classes drew on my long-term practice of drawing from movement.  I’m used to sketching from dance, with the attention given to large physical movement.  The actors didn’t move so much – most of the interesting changes going on were subtle facial cues.  In drawing faces, I’m accustomed to doing portraits, where I can take my time to study the structure and character of a face.  Trying to apply the quick-response, gestural interpretation of movement to facial expressions was a challenge I definitely haven’t yet mastered, but I love to keep finding fresh challenges!

I’d be interested to hear from actors or other participants in the classes about what you see in my sketches, and whether they reveal anything to you that you might not get by looking at a still photo or video of the classes.  Please feel free to comment here, and I’ll respond.  (Comments from first-time commenters are held for moderation, so may take a day or so to appear on the blog.)