Sixty Squares
Returning to Art School
When I was young, I wanted to go to art school.
Practical matters, as they often do, got in the way of my plans. Choices were made that led me away from my artistic aspirations. But life has a way of unfolding in ways we can’t possibly predict.
Years later, after a career in healthcare and a change in life circumstances, I was able to fulfil my dream: I returned to school to study art.
At that time, I was looking for a challenge that would push me both creatively and intellectually and so, as a mature student, I enrolled at the local university and began my formal art education.
The very first class, on that very first day, was the beginning of a foundational course in the principles and concepts of drawing. Our first assignment in that class turned out to be my absolute favourite assignment during the years spent studying for my art degree. It was called Sixty Squares.
The Sixty Squares Project
The assignment was to make 60 squares exploring different drawing materials, processes and concepts. Each square had to be unique in choice of medium used to render it. Repeating the use of the same medium in a different colour wasn’t allowed.
Sounds simple enough, right? The brilliance of the assignment was its simplicity. It was the sheer number of squares needed to fulfil the task that pushed me to really consider how we see and understand shapes in artistic expression.
It was easy at first, drawing squares with different conventional drawing materials such as pencil, crayon and marker. Some of the squares were simple outlines and others were filled in squares.
Then began an exploration of positive and negative space in the construction of a square. Again easy enough, but then where to go from there?
I had to dig deep and think about unconventional ways of making marks with conventional drawing materials and conversely how to make conventional marks with unconventional drawing materials.
This line of enquiry led me to use the drips from a melting crayon to make the shape of a square. I experimented with needle and thread to sew a square onto paper both by hand and with the aid of a sewing machine. Bleach was used to “draw” a square on fabric. Even pantry items, including onion skins, blueberries and paprika were used as drawing materials.
Pushing Past the Obvious
Then I began to think more conceptually about the shape itself. How much of a square shape is needed for the eye to perceive a square? Just the four corners? Or would three corners suffice? These are the kinds of questions that were considered.
This was where the work got really interesting. Thinking past the obvious became a game. One of my favourite submissions was cutting a square piece of paper into puzzle piece shapes and then presented the puzzle pieces in such a way as to task the viewer to visually assemble the pieces to form the square. Another favourite rendering was a square made by cutting vertical slits into a sheet of paper.
A Lasting Impression
The most important lesson that I learned from this project, so early in my art education, was that making the work is what propels creativity. Even when at a loss for ideas, pushing ahead with doing the work generated information to help me.
I was excited by the prospect of not knowing where the creative process would take me, nor could I have predicted beforehand the destination.
This insight is still resonant for me today.
I loved the Sixty Squares assignment. I’ve held onto the collection of my squares because it was that meaningful to me. This was the type of artistic challenge that I’d hoped for when deciding to return to university after a 20 year absence.
This assignment was just the first of many in my art school experience. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to begin.
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