Imagination

 Over four weeks we worked with simple imaginative processes.  We worked primarily with wax crayons, pastels and drawing paper.  It was not a course in color imagination.  The central point was to enter into imaginative activity again and again while retaining a feeling of being rooted in the world.  We started by indiscriminately developing imaginative elements in drawing.  Then we discriminated and created specific imaginations, yet imaginations we had no inkling of when we started our pictures.  Then we worked with the old French story, the Master Cat, or Puss in Boots.  Now the inkling was given, here we had the new challenge of working freely out of our imaginations yet with a given content.  The goal was to experience developing compositions out of a process and exploration.  

Color Moods Course

In January Ella Manor-Lapointe came to teach a course on color moods. We worked with questions such as what color is sweet? tangy? sad? How can we create a mood space out of color in which to work with a theme?

Winter

The Free Columbia Art Course

A quest into the heart of artistic action.

Free is a verb not an adjective.

 

            What is it to be free? In economics there is no such thing as a free lunch. If something is put before you, someone has paid for it, someone has made it. Someone’s time and effort has created it and in order to do that they must have found the way to be supported. Maybe not well, maybe not fairly. Nothing is free.

 

            Once when I was working in my studio I heard a frantic rustling in the wall. Because starlings sometimes nest outside the door I thought, “Maybe it is a bird that somehow has gotten inside the wall”. And I thought, “How sad, it will die in there, it will never get out.” The rustling continued and I thought, “ I must release it. But how?” I looked outside but I could not see any hole in the wall. The siding looked pretty stable and I didn’t know how to get it off. I thought, “ Oh well, it will die.” And I went back inside. The rustling continued and I thought, “ Oh, I can cut open the wall from the inside!” I cut into the wall, it was full of insulation- wrong wall. I listened close to an inside wall although I could not see how a bird could have gotten in there, and then I cut into it. The sheet rock piece came lose and the rustling was louder. I realized that I would have to reach inside the hole and catch what I hoped was a bird. Suddenly this was not so appealing. I reached into the wall and something thrashed against my fingers. I reached around the electrical wires trying to catch this wild creature. After a few tries my hand closed around wings and body and I drew my hand out around a small soft brown bird, not a starling, very frightened. I walked to the door and stepped out and opened my hand and it flew – free.

 

            In creating the Free Columbia Art Course we wanted to establish an initiative where the inspirations living in the human being could flow freely into students and teachers. We wanted to establish a place where people could experience spiritual science through the medium of painting. From September 2009 through May 2010 we worked with 3-5 full time and 25 part time students painting and studying five days and two evenings a week. We worked in blocks such as: luster colors, image colors, color moods, color perspective, imagination and impressionism. We worked with the seasonal changes of the cycle of the year. In the evenings we studied art history, philosophy of aesthetics, social threefolding and the Goetheanum as well as a weekly study of Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner. Our students ranged in age from nineteen to seventy six and in experience with painting and anthroposophy from none to many years of dedicated study.

 

            In September 2010 began our second year.  In the  2010-11 year there will be no set tuitions for full time or part time students. The courses, which are intensive, well penetrated and rigorous, are freely given. If you want to attend we look not at your ability to pay or at your artistic accomplishments. We look at your commitment to take on this work with us. To discover the transformations that will occur because you devote yourself to the work. The year will be spent painting, studying anthroposophy, playing marionettes, experiencing eurythmy, singing, potluck meals and the community that forms around intensive work.

 

            Sometimes when people hear about what we are doing they don’t believe it. Some think that there must be some trick about it being given freely, others think that it must not have much real content, maybe it’s a drop in space for lonely artists. But Free Columbia is true. We teach a rich, varied and intensive program and there is no set tuition. Everyone is encouraged to donate who values the work and the endeavor. Free Columbia is supported by freely given gift money. We do this not just because we are socially minded and want to provide affordable art education, for that we could use many other models such as needs based scholarships or sliding scales. We have created our financial model to encourage a free cultural space into which inspiration may flow.

 

            How can we do this without charging tuition? To understand may require a change in thinking. Is it possible for inspiration to flow freely into individuals? Is it possible for money to flow so that inspiration is supported? Free is a verb not an adjective.

Laura Summer       www.freecolumbia.org

Color and Space

We entered into oil painting and color perspective.  It was about becoming more sensitive. 

            We started by observing marionettes and models and rendering what we saw on paper.  To do this we first used charcoal, then various shades of watercolor paint.  We simplified the broad and differentiated field of vision into simple areas which we created with 3 shades of paint, say sepia or indigo, and then the white of our paper.  Then we looked at our flat paper and saw figures in space, we saw light and dark relationships which had come out of spatial observation.  This is something quite interesting, experiencing space on a two dimensional surface.  Then we took these sketches and transformed dark areas into depth by using colors which distance themselves from us.  We rendered the light areas with colors which approach us.  The three dimensional space which had been our point of departure disappeared.  In its wake a new space opened.  The figures came apart.  The more flat we painted the more this new space opened out and in.   Instead of a static and empty physical space, a color space appeared, a depth with an abundance of content, a space filled with life and moods.

             This was our goal, bringing to awareness the threshold between the realm of painting, the flat life of color and form, and sculptural experience.  Now we can ask with some seriousness if colors are two dimensional.  We have seen that they are, and the more flat are, the more they are not.

   

Columbia House

Now Free Columbia has a house! Each year we have tried to help our students find affordable housing but it has been challenging, so when a beautiful old victorian house came on the market in the nearby town of Philmont we decided to buy it and rent rooms to our students. Nathaniel and Andrea are also living here and managing the house. We are very happy to have a presence in Philmont and we look forward to Andrea's creation of gardens in the spring. Maybe someday we will be able to renovate the 2 barns for studio space but for now we can offer very pleasant and affordable housing to our students.

Library

We are very happy to announce that Sarah Hearn has agreed to be the librarian for the Free Columbia Lending Library of Visual Art Work.

Our upcoming Library event is on Friday December 17 from 1 to 5 pm at the Banjo Mountain Cafe. Come join the library and go home with Art for the walls of your house. Consider a library membership as a holiday gift.

The Color Course

In our first block we explored the movement of color. We created a color wheel based on the relationship of light to darkness in Goethe's color theory and then one based on Rudolf Steiner's understanding of the movement of color. We wrestled with questions such as: what color comes forward? what goes back? What is the mood of turquoise? orange? Is one color different from another? Where do we experience this difference?

images from the third week

who is that next to that painting?

SECOND YEAR !

We are beginning the second year of Free Columbia! We have 4 fulltime students for the first block and 10 part time students. This year we will offer four weekday mornings of painting, Tuesday through Friday. On Tuesday afternoons we will form a troop of marionette players. During the fall and winter we will learn to play the marionettes and in the spring we will put on local performances. A class in light and dark drawing will be given on Wednesday afternoons followed by an open studio time. In the fall and winter on Tuesday evenings Nathaniel Williams will teach Philosophy of Aesthetics and in the spring Patrick Stolfo will teach Evolution of Consciousness through the History of Art. On Thursday evenings throughout the year we will have a study group on Theosophy. Five Saturday mornings throughout the year will be devoted to working artistically with seasonal themes.

 

            All courses are freely given and everyone who is interested in making a commitment to part or full time study is encouraged to apply. For more information you may visit our website at www.freecolumbia.org You may view last years experiences at http://freecolumbia.blogspot.com/ For registration and a detailed schedule you may contact us at freecolumbiaart@gmail.com or Laura Summer at 518-672-7302 and Nathaniel Williams at 518-672-4090

 

Nathaniel and Laura, along with other artists helped to create and hold a conferenece last August called: 

The Search for Humanity in Contemporary Art 

Exploring postmodernism from the perspective of spiritual science
through exhibits, performances, talks and discussions.
August 13  – August 15

A conference organized by the Visual Art Section of the School for Spiritual Science in North America 

summer courses

Color Course July 2010

End of the Year Exhibition

Our first year is over. It has been very successful. On May 26 we opened our end of the year exhibition at Raising Matter (www.raisingmatter.org) in Hudson NY. On May 28 we had our graduation celebration for our 3 full time students, Kristin Dalton, Laurel Iselin and Karin Heide Weinrich. When we closed the show on May 30 over 100 people had visited to see the work.

We are looking forward to our next year which will begin in September 2010. If you are interested in Free Columbia please contact us at freecolumbiaart@gmail.com

Impressionism

Impressionism

 

            Our normal experience of life is fragmentary, the world is broken into obscurity.  The immediate impressions I meet leave me thinking, making sense and speculating; they leave me unsatisfied.  The work of art is the mysterious corner of the world where the fragment has become a whole.  While I am in beauty I lack nothing, I desire nothing.  To take fragments from peripheral facets of a half visible whole and to lift them to beauty is the activity of Impressionism.  We pursued this work through pastel work and poetry in the landscape.  

image colors

image colors: green, white, black and peach blossom.

What mystery lies here?

We spent 4 weeks getting to know these colors, their moods, their inclinations, by painting them in many different ways. 

Here are our experiments.