Project 1: Cause and Effect

     We have performing arts and we have visual arts. I wanted to look at what happens when you bring the two together. I chose dance as my performing arts, but my question is how do I take something that is in constant motion and put it into one still image while also capturing all the emotion that comes from dance? I came up with the idea of dancing on paper.

     I cleared out an open floor space. I rolled out white paper and tapped it to the floor. This was my canvas. Now, I needed to get my palette. I used watered down acrylic paint. The acrylic paint needed to be watered down so that it moved smoothly across the paper without issue. I got all the colors of the rainbow, but only ended up using red, yellow, blue and a little bit of purple. I threw my hair up into a bun and put on some old clothed and old socks. With my music blaring, I started putting paint on my hands and feet and just dancing. I didn't think about the paint. All I did was make sure it was on me. I wanted the marks on the paper to be honest and true to my dancing and not what I thought it should look like. Dancing on the paper was weird. If I stayed still for too long, I would get stuck to the paper. If I moved to fast, it might rip the paper. These were some of the things to cause my dancing to be not as full out as I would have liked. After I finished dancing, I let the paper sit and dry over night. 

     Now that I have all this beautiful paper, what do I do with it? After throwing around a couple ideas, I decided I would create a silhouette of a dancer. I wanted to use as much of my own material as possible, so since I'm a dancer, I got my own pictures for reference. I took my camera to on of my dance classes and got a few shots. I printed the pictures out and drew on them to see what I like and thought would work the best. I picked the one of a c-jump.

     I chose to use a piece of mat board as my background. I wanted something sturdy since the paper was thin. I tried a couple things to try and add dimension to the background. I wanted the background lighter in the center and too fade out darker. This was to represent the the spot light you get when you dance on stage. First I tried black and grey acrylic paint with a paint brush but I didn't like how it looked. It was too clean and polished. Then I tried spray paint and a paper towel. I wasn't a fan of this either. This had to much contrast and was now too messy. Lastly I tried acrylic paint again, but I used paper towels to put the paint on. I loved how this looked. It had the right balance of messy, but blended. 

     Back to the painted paper I went. I cut out my favorite sections of the paper. There were so many different textures and colors to look at. I just cut out little pieces that looked cool in weird and funky shapes. These became my puzzle pieces to create the silhouette of the dancer. I sketched out the dancer in pencil on my background. Then I started to cut, overlap, and put my pieces together. I started with just taping them down so I could adjust it accordingly. Once I had all the pieces put together, I slowly took the tap off and glued down the paper with cement glue. 

     Tada! I was done. Here is my final project. I hope in the future to advance and further this single piece into a collection a four or five pieces.

This piece of work is a big part of who I am. Dance is a way for my to let go and express who I am, but there was no picture to show that. Being able to capture my movements into this piece of artwork is so fascinating. All the mixing of colors are so interesting to look at. I feel like this shows the beauty of spontaneity and just letting go and being in the moment. Wonderful things can happen from that. 

"Dancing is an art. The floor is my canvas, and I am the brush, and whatever I create comes from the heart."