Want to Play?

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“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”  George Bernard Shaw – Dramatist (1856 – 1950)

I was thinking about how much fun I have had when I allow myself to play freely as this child is doing.  The freedom to explore the world we don’t see everyday, sometimes when it is right in front of us, is a wonderful thing.

I remember when I was turning 65, how I decided to put on some African music I had and begin to dance to it naked in my own home.  And then I got the idea to paint my breasts and make prints from them onto cloth.  I had no idea what these simple parts of my own body look like from a different perspective and it just seemed a fun way to play.  There is nothing strange or silly (well, silly I can live with) about it.  It was playing, and discovering, and it was immensely a fun way to celebrate.  In the end, the two prints I made – one white and one multi-color, ended up becoming quilts that looked nothing at all like breasts.

I once saw the installations of art by a famous artist who did basically the same thing with parts of his body he said he never saw before.  It was amazing, for he had manipulated the images that he got, and nothing was even recognizable as whatever it was originally, but it was immense fun to think about someone to be unafraid to play and to discover whatever there was to find.

It isn’t just the human body with which people are afraid to play and discover.  It is things we all take for granted.  The cracks in sidewalks, the marks on trees, the forms of all sorts of things out in nature, and perhaps a million other things that we really don’t know at all except from a distance.  It isn’t just about playing with toys or playing games that we played as children.  It’s about getting to know the world we live in, up close and personal.  Have you played lately?

 

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Art Exhibit – Part II

So now you have seen Part I, and I want to let you know that I am quite prolific with speaking what is in my heart and the compass of my soul.  So Part II will show you some more things I have created, and you might question their designation as “art.”  I want you to know that as an artist, I define what is MY art and what it will chose to be at any given time in my life according to how I am envisioning life at that particular time.  I like the freedom to celebrate life in the many ways I choose to celebrate it.  When I turned 65, I decided to do something different for my special day.  I had put on some African music which I liked very much, and I was thinking of how the people paint their bodies to signify something that is very meaningful to them, so I got out some black cloth, and being all alone, stripped and painted my breasts white.  I pressed them to the cloth.  We know ourselves in one way, or perhaps two, but there are things and ways of ourselves that we have never observed.  So when I looked at the cloth I had created, I was, to say the least, surprised, for whoever would ever know that this was what a breast looked like on cloth.  Here are a couple of pieces that came from this wonderful experiment in which I learned to see myself in a whole new way.  This process never ends, for there is always something new to learn, and as we change over the many years, so do our bodies and minds.  Each part becomes a special art exhibit all of its own.

Boobalala by Anne Copeland – Paint and Fiber

 

“My Garden of Earthly Delights” by Anne – Paint and Fiber

This quilt is about 18″ x 20″ and it features the breast prints in multicolors, which was a lot more fun and challenging than just doing white.  And to think, I still have more body parts to color and experiment with.  Who knows what this will ultimately lead to.  I am certainly not the first person to experiment with painting body parts, but I did this my way and without any lessons either.  The frog is painted separately.

Oh, and this was a charity quilt I decided to make for Art for Autism, since I have been very involved for many years with autistic and other special needs children. For those of you who might recoil in horror, there is nothing ugly or wierd about our breasts.  I fed all my children with mine, lived through breast cancer, and now that I have passed three quarters of a life (age 77), I am glad to be able to still have those breasts.  For me, they are no different than having teeth, hair, armpits, or feet or a backside. Does a tree hide its branches in shame?

So this is Art Exhibit Part II.  We will look at some other ideas in different “exhibits” I get to curate and write about.  It’s my show.  See you at the next one.