E-Mail Us

Summer Quarter Essay — May 2006

Art as Play
by Andrew Rush   ©2006

---

"Summertime-and the livin' is easy…" George and Ira Gershwin

As a young schoolboy in St. Louis, I started yearning for summer long before winter was over. After months of galoshes and mittens, of grey routine and droning multiplication tables, would rise the daydreams of summer freedom: Time stopped. Schoolbooks forgotten. Clothes off. Sun, water and green, green everywhere. Lazy days followed by twilight picnic suppers. And after dark, forgotten by the 'grown-ups', we kids left free to race off across the neighborhood lawns to catch fireflies in jars.

Of course now that I have put away my childish ways, the delicious freedom of summer seems a long ago dream, or maybe even a fantasy made up of selected bits of memory. But still, summer does seems different somehow, with its ancient seasonal call to step out of routine, to rejuvenate (from L. re- juvenis. to render young again) and refresh one's spirit with new experience and change. Time to catch fireflies in a jar. Time to play.

"Turn your work into play and share it with your friends", teases my artist friend Roz, whenever I complain about being overworked. So what has to happen for an activity to become play? Here are some examples of what I would call art play:

1. Play can mean trying on new experiences for a little while. Such as taking a short course or workshop in a media or approach that you have never done before, just for the hell of it. Learning a new skill can refresh everything else you do, even if you never use it again.

2. Play means inventing a game. For example, how about putting aside a day-a -week for four weeks to go sketching to a new site each time, preferably with a friend. Like the zoo, the mall, the beach, a baseball game. Soon you may discover that designing your own art curriculum empowers you in unexpected ways.

3. Play suggests breaking up your routines. Maybe when visiting your favorite museum this summer, you first go to the rooms that you never visit. Or visit a gallery that is not your style, and for a little while try to empathize and learn from a different point of view (By the way, we have compiled a list of summer museum shows for you summer travelers in this issue).

4. Play often involves others. Be sure you have an art bag when you go to the beach or the mountains with family or friends. Invent an art project everyone can do. Beach sculpture. Invented illustrated stories. Paper hat designs. If you can't come up with projects, start with the dozens of books written by artists who work with children.

5. Play means stretching your parameters of possibility. Go to an art store and buy three samples of paper you never worked on before. Or make a list of art projects you would love to do if you had the time, the skills or the money to try, then see if you are willing to commit to one of them. Or enroll in a studio subject where you are already skilled, but make a pact with your teacher to use the opportunity to push yourself to a new level. Or make a date with an artist friend you admire with the purpose of learning from looking at his/her work, asking questions that let your friend talk about what is important to him/her.

6. Play can imply activity for its own sake. It might involve setting aside a morning to transform three old unsuccessful drawings or paintings, except work upside down, or by adding a new media for a radical effect. Or making a game of keeping only the best one and throwing the other two away.

Whatever it is about summer that evokes the spirit of play, it reveals the tendency of all learning to become calcified in its own seriousness. Even in the world of art-making, where play is such an important creative component, it is a wise antidote to remember to reach both regularly and deeply into our childlike rituals, where the experience of play began.

In presenting our summer curriculum, we at The Drawing Studio are looking to inspire and support the art of summer that lives in all of us. Have a wonderful summer. Peace.

©2006 Andrew Rush. May not be copied or reproduced in any form without permission

 

Sampling of Summer Museum Exhibitions

*De Young Museum, SAN FRANCISCO - Crown Point Press: The Art of Etching, 25 February 2006 -27 August 2006
*Experience Music Project, SEATTLE-- DoubleTake: From Monet to Lichtenstein, (works from Paul Allen's private collection, many not been seen in public for more than 50 years).
*Art Institute of CHICAGO--Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master through Modern, June 3-July 30, 2006, (celebrates a gift of 240 drawings)
*Walker Art Center, MINNEAPOLIS--The Shape of Time, April 17 - August 3, (postwar abstraction to experiments of the 1980s and 1990s)
*Metropolitan Museum, NEW YORK--Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings, June 13 - September 3; Raphael at the Metropolitan: The Colonna Altarpiece, June 20 - September 3; Girodet: Romantic Rebel, May 24- August 27; Oh Photography: A Tribute to Susan Sontag, June 6 - August 2006
*National Gallery of Art,WASHINGTON--Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections and The Poetry of Light: Venetian Drawings from the National Gallery, April 30 - October 1. Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and The Renaissance of Venetian Painting, June 18 - September 17.
*LOS ANGELES County Museum of Art--David Hockney Portraits from June 11 - September 4; Richard Pousette-Dart: Works on Paper from June 29 - September 17.