abstraction

The students practiced their abstract sketches in a quiet, almost meditative state. I played some Brian Eno (Music for Films) and at times you could hear nothing else. We broke at the end of an hour or so and talked about the sketches. Some of the kids wanted to give a title or some background context to their work, while others just talked about their process (I used the stencils, I was playing with grid paper, I limited myself to four colors). The kids who were working on patterning talked about eye fatigue and I took the opportunity to introduce the genre of Op art. I found some examples of Op art online and certain kids claimed to feel a bit sick after looking at the Op. Towards the end of the day many of the students got silly and needed a sort of hysterical release from the trance of abstract art we were under. Other students appeared to have a higher tolerance for the altered state of repetitive mark making and lost all track of time.