Artist Statement

Artist Statement

Directing from Inside the Ensemble – for Hamlet

ARTIST STATEMENT

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I am an interdisciplinary teaching artist with many tools in her back pocket.  I am a magpie collecting moments of brilliance that illuminate the unknown; bright and shiny jewels well buried in the shoulds, have to’s, and can’t’s.  I am an artist enamored and challenged by choreographic patterns, theatrical storytelling, musical heartbeats and complex thoughts.  A revolutionary who believes in one’s potential not one’s past.  I am digging deep, following arts’ roots to the source of humanity.

Education’s root is educe, to draw out or evoke that which is latent.  I believe art has the passionate pull and visual wonderment to draw out a student’s potential.  My purpose is to see the student in this moment, feel their potential and subtle leanings in order to offer tools and questions evoking their self-expression.

I believe arts education has, over many years, subtly and slyly become concrete training under the guise of ‘education’.  This rouse has grown into an industrial sized system of stone that is difficult to break out of.  It is encasing, and thus stifling, one’s self-expression, self-discovery and evolution. But my work challenges this overdeveloped institution. My work is the grass and ivy growing through that cracks, embracing that which is stable in this institution and pulling down that which is unsustainable.  Making it whole again, organically, in order to create a place where “I can do that?!” escapes from astonished mouths only to be greeted with a  soft smile.

Ivy photo by Ken Douglass

This is dangerous work.  This is disturbing work – not to the students but to the system – because this work is based in structured improvisation, artistically and educationally. This work is based in mutual respect and the fluid possibilities of student as teacher and teacher as student in any given moment.  It is built from trust, process, play, exploration, failure and risk.  It is focused on empowering the student.  It strives for the balance of individual and ensemble; realism and abstraction; ownership and generosity.

Each class, each piece, each performance asks questions of myself and of my community.  Being present and vulnerable in the moments of creation and expression allows these questions to arise.  It also allows sparks of insight to be ignited. Poet Adrienne Rich beautifully stated, “whatever we do together is pure invention/the maps they gave us were out of date/by years…”  It is not my job to create and hand out the maps.  It is my job to inspire cartographers for their own individual and yet global adventures.

What’s your artistic statement?

Be bold.  Ask yourself the hard questions…

• What do you look for in art?
• What do you want to say with your art?
• How do you say it?
• Who do you create with?

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