BREATHING ROOM

Breathing Room is an installation of 3 or more 6'x6' canvases. Here installed at Taliesin (Spring Green, WI) sewn end to end to make an 18' "scroll" script for breathing. This work originated from my own practice of tactile meditation. I started with simple mark-making on small squares of paper and also thinking of my work as part of my meditation practice. I have trained in breathing and walking meditation, but realized that the tactile quality of art process, usually repetitive for me, is naturally repairing and restive in my life. These posts from November are specifically about that beginning : Sound of Breathing and Assignment. I began to make the large, white gesso and graphite paintings by directly transcribing the letters and syllables of my breathing sound as literally as possible. I planned to make more than one, enough to represent each in a group of people, and to use them as an environmental place setting. Altogether, placed flat on the ground or floor, hung together as walls, or attached end to end as a sort of current or continuum, these paintings are to be installed to create and symbolize a space for rest and freedom from constraint. The idea of "breathing room" as spaciousness, simplicity, and brightness offered to the inhabitant of the space. As much as this work was meditative in process, it has become, in product, a script and a texture for meditation.
Here is a short slide show of the images in the upper room of the tower.