If you've even wandered the Art Hop exhibits in downtown Kalamazoo and thought, "I wish I had a chance to be part of this," your time has come.
The event is called "A Body of Work" and the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo invites everyone to get creative.
The idea is that a piece of artwork will be created by more than one person and none will know what the others have contributed.
Participants buy a 13x13 square inch of quality art paper for $5 from the Arts Council. Each section is marked for a head, torso or legs and have beginning and ending marks. The body parts can be drawn or painted and don't have to be human. And if the idea of creating body parts are too constraining, organizers say, think of them as top, middle and bottom.
Drawing, writing, painting, collage, scrawl, photography -- any of it is OK when it comes to creating your piece of the art work. Individual pieces are due May 2.
Three pieces will be put together into one larger piece for the creation of at least 30 pieces of work, which will be for sale during the May 6 Art Hop at the Art Council offices in the Epic Center downtown.
The idea comes from a parlor game the
Arts Council says began around 1925 in surrealist writer-theorist Andre Breton's Paris apartment. Local artist and architect Micheal Dunn proposed the event to the Art Council as a way to get more people involved and draw in people who might not necessarily come out to event.
Artistic coordinator for the council, Adrienne Marks, and artist Elizabeth King took the idea, ran with it and together brought the project together, Dunn says. They all are particularly hopeful that young people will participate.
Dunn became a fan of the exquisite corpse, as this type of art work it is known, as an undergrad and taught it in classes at WMU where it always led to some of the best work his students created because of its spontaneous, random nature.
"The nature of the thing is the pieces are off the wall," Dunn says. "It's almost guaranteed."
Writer: Kathy Jennings
Source: Michael Dunn, artist
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