saint_monkey

one of the few things that i have learned well in the university of washington's art program, is usually a hard lesson for most artists. when confronted with an artistic block, i can generally overcome it fairly quickly and easily, thanks to the teaching of one of my earliest instructors, Richard Kehl, he taught one of the school's
"Foundation" courses, two-dimensional design, which he had taken from it's traditional course (mechanical perspective, layout etc... this can be learned from one of the other instructors teaching the same course, a graphic designer named Karen Cheng, who will happily pound you to death with technique and hound an exacting ability to "render well" out of you, if you so desire,) anyhow Richard has taken this traditional wash-out course and turned it into a course on "how to be creative." He teaches that in order to be a "visual poet" one must continually be detached from the definitive, always looking at the world and viewing it with the wonder of a child. he wants everyone to pick up a pen and ask "is this thing on?" towards that end, his assignments tend to be a mishmash of almost random instructions. "draw out the moon," "sky, handle, shoe." etc.

since 1970, he has written scraps of quotes and snippets of random information on scraps of paper, which after a time are assembled, and then using an old manual typewriter, cobbled them into quotesheets and handed out in class. After thirty years, he has collected these sheets into a book, called breathing on your own

i've since been back to his class a few times to show films from the surrealists to his class. on one of these occasions, he gave me an uncorrected proof of his latest book, and i am just thrilled by it. not only is it simply photocopies of the quotesheets, right down to the floating "e"s and the inked over mistakes of his manual typing, but also, peppered throughout, are his notes to himself, including many, many, of the wonderful assignments, which he jotted down as he thought of them, and these are not included in the final cut of the book, since they make no sense tossed in with the quotes. to me though, they are gold. for not only are they springboards for projects, but once you get into a Kehl-vibe, it is easy to come up with similar projects on your own. often one or two brainstorming session will give you enough ideas for nine or ten weeks of projects. And these simple one-line lead ins make wonderful wonderful starting places, because not only do they make you think, but they are infinitely recyclable. some samples from "breathing on your own:"

make a list of all you have left to lose

create a map with mental distances between points

describe how one measures silence

( more projects for the dis-illusioned. )