Kingston Shebang Artist – Harry Symons
Throughout the workshops preparing for The Whole Shebang in Kingston and then finally presenting it to our community, I was inspired the Andrea’s presentation of the challenges of performing – of dancing and singing in public. Initially I was dreaming of how to visualize a dance of ideas, but as the workshops evolved, I shifted from thinking of nouns to verbs. And as we were all refining our efforts as we took on more complicated challenges, I focused my efforts on a series of visual, three dimensional scores which I presented in pop-up exhibitions with the Agitated Plover Salon. For someone like me, who doesn’t really dance and sing, the exploration of the issues within The Whole Shebang stuck a cord because of the similarities and the connections of the underlying creative concerns. Cross discipline pollination fueled my creative imaginings. So many of the things we did, whether it was flocking, stop-motion, poly-rhythms or narrating and interpreting a story – all of these activities enhanced my understand of and appreciation for what could be done with our bodies in space and time. I found a voice. All of which fueled my passion to work with something of these notions in visual form. This evolving set of clusters of paintings is the visual interpretation of imagining a series of bubbles expanding and evolving over time, of a series of gestures and movements that happened between start and finish. But while Andrea’s expertise and insight established the creative context that allowed confidences to be discovered, it was the way that the group as a whole connected and related that struck me, stayed with me and help to inspire these painted forms being the way that they were.
