I Went Looking for Africa and I Found My Self a Workshop with Clarissa Sligh

Clarissa Sligh’s workshop, I Went Looking for Africa and I Found My Self, began with a visualization exercise of journey. With their eyes closed, students spoke about where they were going and what they were doing. Some emotional, some practical, some imaginative, students shared their journeys with one another that led to a verbal and theoretical art object of home, mountainous terrain, Wonderland and Lake Superior. This poetic act was followed by a listening/speaking exercise, where students were challenged for three minutes of expression or intake.

Sligh encouraged students to observe their minds throughout the class and take notice. Students made art from a pile of found objects and discovered things about themselves from their selection and process.

“It’s really exciting how unique everybody’s expression is. It’s really exciting,” Sligh said. Sligh was gracious and encouraging, offering a new approach to art through curiosity, “So often, when we think about creativity, it becomes cliché. We fall back on what we do…but curiosity is different.”

Drawing entire lives, childhoods and recent life events onto single sheets of paper, students’ work exposed dense landscapes of importance and minor meanings, each piece with its own structure and approach. The workshop ended on the heart, its physical expression and the conversations it inspired.

To all those who missed it, there is still time to be inspired by Clarissa Sligh– come visit her exhibit, Three Wishes: Maps, Cranes & Love, showing now at Woodland Pattern, or read Voyage(r) and Wrongly Bodied: Documenting Transition From Female To Male.