Instructional Performance: Landscape Patchwork

For my performance piece, I decided to create a fun and casual drawing activity called Landscape Patchwork. The instructions for the work are as follows:

1. I begin by drawing a sun
2. I call over random participants
3. They are allowed to draw – an animal, a piece of land, a plant, an element of the sky, a person, a piece of architecture (only allowed to draw onw thing)
4. The next participant then draws, but cannot draw the same thing that the previous person drew (e.g. if the person drew a tree and the current participant wants to draw a plant then he/she will have to draw something else – aka a flower or a shrub)
5. The drawing is completed when the paper is full

The work was conducted over a duration of 4 hours, and the canvas was an A3 sized poster paper. All drawings were made with a black marker that had both thin and thick edges.

The final result of the work turned out to be more unexpected than my initial image of the work. I expected people to look at the title and the sun i drew and follow to draw a landscape with standard characteristics. Instead, the participant’s contributions were more creative and chaotic (if I may say) as they played with scale and positioning to create a more abstract piece from the initial intention i had. It did show the personalities of my fellow peers and their thought process.

The video is shown here:

Author: Amanda Lee

Sometimes what you are most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free

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