Oxbohemians are incredibly fortunate to work with two visiting artists per semester on exploratory 10 day long workshops. OS33's first VA is Berkeley-based Lucy Puls, who is also an art professor at the University of California, Davis. Lucy crafted a prompt that will aid OS33 in ways they probably don't know yet in the remainder of their semester, which they've been using along with some new material on campus: Solarfast inks! Read on for a summary of the prompt and some images of works in progress:
GO TO SEED/GONE TO SEED/SEEDgo (or run) to seed (of a plant) cease flowering as the seeds develop: deteriorate in condition, strength, or efficiency
Usually one thinks of the phrase "go to seed" as referring to something abandoned or deteriorated. A garden gone to seed would be one that hasn't been tended for some time. The below text however is quite relevant to how to think about the project prompt:
"It seems "go to seed" has contradictory meaning. Final stage of plant life seemingly expiring, on the one hand, and a stage of coming rebirth, which is fecund, on the other hand."
Locate and consider places or spaces in the immediate environment that have "gone to seed" Photograph the place from a number of different vantage points.
Using Solarfast light sensitive inks on fabric, paper, or experimental materials, create as many iterations as time allows. You can continue with photographic images (via negatives), create photograms by placing objects or handmade stencils onto the Solarfast, or three-dimensional forms by sewing, gluing, stapling, or nailing the fabric image to a support or armature. Think about other media and techniques such as watercolor, collage, paper mache, or found materials. Additionally, you, your person, can be a material. You could do a short performance with the finished piece or you could be the armature for a built, sewn, or constructed object. This way you'd work in tandem with the built element, completing the "sculpture" with your presence.
