Big Draw: Little Draw
Location:
Escape Workshops, Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire
Web site:
julie.debastion.com Escape Workshops is a drop in centre based in Stratford upon Avon. Managed by Robin Wade it provides artist led workshops for the local community. As part of Big Draw 2010 artist Julie De Bastion conducted workshops centred around the idea of a "storybox" which involved both wire drawing and monoprinting. The artist felt that these workshops provided the foundations to a new way of making participatory art, which she has called "Polymeric Co-created Art".
Artist Julie de Bastion worked with participants who regularly attend Escape Wokshops. Particpants first drew with blackwire to create 3D drawings, these were subsequently replicated in 2D using monoprinting techniques. The prints were designed as an all over pattern to simulate wallpaper which then covered the boxes which had been given to participants. The boxes themeselves were the drawers of a discarded chest of drawers which the artist had found by chance. Each wire drawing was then placed inside a "box" to create a small world within a drawer.
This project evolved through an amalgamation of the artist's original idea and the particpants subsequent reponse to it. The artist recognised a unity in the work which she entitiled" Polymeric co-created art" meaning an artwork made of many parts but retaining its wholeness and cohesiveness.
