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| STATEMENT |
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More than any other art form, printmaking gives me freedom to articulate my constant flow of images—some emerging slowly, some rushing almost too fast to catch.
The moment of printing happens after a long process of sketching forms and often cutting intricate stencils to separate color and delineate space (a skill I learned during my ten years as a layout/mechanical artist). I like to combine techniques, such as intaglio and monoprinting, or laying stencils over hand-drawn images. Whatever techniques I use, my primary focus is to imbue my images with life energy, an anima that touches people. I am very particular as to how specific figures, abstract shapes and color work in concert with each other. But, at its best, the composition is accomplished with spontaneity and without inhibition.
For me, the work is a transformational processing of my own experiences, including those as a clinical social worker. People seem to recognize something familiar in my imagery. I think it serves not only as a window into my unique world, but as a window into their world as well—one they may not have looked through before. My work is quite accessible and intimate. The complex layering of the prints may function as an allegorical space where people can make their own meaning.
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| BIOGRAPHY |
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Carol Morrison has been printmaking since 2004. Her work includes intaglios, collographs, monoprints and monotypes. She has exhibited at the 1110 Gallery, and 195 Christie Street, and SONYA Art Stroll. She has been a featured artist on myartspace.com.
Ms. Morrision has worked with master printers Marina Ancora, Sheila Goloborotko and Sheila Marbain. She was art director for BrooKenya!, a multimedia project in the USA and Kenya using film and Internet art. She worked for 12 years as a layout artist and magazine art director. She studied with artists Yale Epstein, Robert Kaupelis and Bruce Waldman and holds a Bachelor of Science in Art Education from New York University.
Ms. Morrison is currently a director in the Office of Clinical Policy at Children’s Services for the City of New York. She holds a Masters of Social Work from Yeshiva University (Masters Thesis: Learning to Draw in the Art of Social Work.) She is a native of Brooklyn, New York, where she currently resides.
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| EDUCATION |
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Education
New York University, School of Education,
B.S. Art Education
Yeshiva University Master of Social Work
Printmaking Workshops and Mentoring
Sheila Goloborotko 2004 to present, Sheila Marbain 2004 to present, Mitch Lyons 2005 to present.
Affiliations
South of the Navy Yard Artists
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| REPRESENTATION |
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| SOLO EXHIBITS |
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| GROUP EXHIBITS |
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Carol Morrison
carolmorrison@mindspring.com
Open Studio Tours
Open Studios at 195 Chrystie Studios December 2006
South of the Navy Yard Artists Studio Stroll May 2007
Group Exhibitions
Brooklyn Nature (Honorable mention in juried show) February 2007
1110 Gallery South of the Navy Yard Artists Group Show /May 2007
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| ARTICLES |
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An excerpt from my thesis "Learning to Draw in the Art of Social Work" focusing on the work of painter and teacher Robert Kaupelis (Kaupelis, R. (1980). Experimental Drawing. New York: Watson-Guptil).
As an Art Education major at New York University in 1980, I studied with one of the great teachers, Dr. Robert Kaupelis. My experience in his class enlarged my ability to "see" the world around me with a renewed sense of discovery and play. Kaupelis believed that seeing is a learned skill, a process in which the senses of sight and touch merge, enabling the artist to interpret what the eyes "feel." (R. Kaupelis, personal communication, 1980). Kaupelis' definition of contour drawing reflects this orientation. He defines contour drawing as "the result of learning to see through the sense of touch" (Kaupelis, 1983, p.21).
Most drawings begin with a generalized outline of the total form and gradually refine down to minor forms and details. But contour drawings are line drawings which are developed form by form, or detail by detail, to arrive at the completed form (Kaupelis, 1983, p.21).
I remember how Dr. Kaupelis taught his first lesson on seeing. In the first assignment, we were to examine and sketch the contours of his face. His instructions were to look closely at his face, allowing our eyes to travel slowly across every minute detail of his facial features. His second assignment was to execute a "blind contour drawing" without looking (Kaupelis, 1980).
You are going to look at your subject harder than you have ever looked at anything in your life. No, you are not going to look at your drawing paper at any time while your pencil is moving! . . .To do [a blind contour drawing], first look at your subject and force yourself to believe that the pencil is touching the form you are attempting to draw. In this sense, contour drawing is more tactile than visual, since its success depends upon your ability to believe that you are actually touching the form or contour with your pencil (Kaupelis, 1980, p.17).
I closed my eyes, visualizing the likeness of his face. I began to feel his face with my memory and to draw the image seen in my mind's eye. I looked at my drawing only after completing the process--the likeness to him was startling. It was by far my best work ever and it had been executed without opening my eyes! He walked over to my easel, looked at my portrait and said, "You looked." I answered, "No, I saw."
It is fifteen years later and I am a social work intern at the Fifth Avenue Center for Counseling and Psychotherapy. Here, I work with a wide spectrum of the mental health patient population. I am, again, learning to see in a new way. In meeting with a new patient, I receive an intake worker's report of the patient's presenting problem and a comprehensive biopsychosocial history. In a sense, the intake report draws a generalized outline of the patient's major issues and life experience. Presenting problems, precipitating factors, mental status, appearance, affect, thought content, hallucinations and delusions, judgment, insight, suicidal or homicidal ideation, strengths and coping mechanisms, family history, and education are each important components of the client's profile. I then take this generalized outline and develop it form by form, and detail by detail, to arrive at the clearest representation of my client's life experience.
Draw an Inner Self Portrait
Draw a self-portrait--from your reflection in a mirror--and try to capture more than the superficial characteristics of your face. Draw what you feel about yourself; attempt to work from within; create a portrait which reflects your mind and heart. Drawing a likeness is unimportant; the feeling or mood of the drawing should be its content. Try drawing a self-portrait with a pencil, another with black chalk, and still another with a one inch varnish brush and black tempera. Try yet another where you combine all of these materials. Note the mood you convey is related directly to the various materials and the way you use them (Kaupelis, 1983, p.38).
The honesty with which I see myself, how I choose to draw my internal portrait will affect my interactions with others. How I listen to patients, my understanding of their subjective experience(s) and how I communicate that understanding are influenced by the paradigms with which I see the world. Painting a representation of my internal feelings means reaching inward, feeling my emotional states and experiencing my often confusing, sometimes painful thought processes--this continues to be my personal struggle. This process of staying with my feelings removes me from the intellectual world of concepts and ideas where I feel safe, protected and secure. Often as I sit across from a client I am witness to their struggle to be in touch with their feelings. The therapeutic alliance becomes a place of confidentiality and trust where mutuality of feeling, identification and common experience allow me to emotionally feel my patient's experience and to communicate that understanding. My understanding of myself impacts on my ability to be with and to see my client. The more fully I see myself--my value orientation, character, personality, personal ideology and biases, in total, my life experience--the more present I can be with another human being.
What does Kaupelis mean by "try to capture more than the superficial features of the face?" How often does a client's affect, tone, mood or rate of speech differ from the manifest content of the communication? In those circumstances, rather than respond to the content of their words I react to the client's metacommunication--the communication suggested by their gestures, facial expressions, body language, voice inflection, etc. I have learned to listen to my "gut instincts," to what I intuitively feel about a patient's emotional state.
Communications occur simultaneously on many levels. We speak of verbal and non-verbal communications, overt and covert communications, of denotative and metacommunication level of messages. The denotative level refers to the literal content of symbols used (usually words). Metacommunications are messages about the message; a metacommunication includes such things as voice inflection, gestures, manner of speaking. . .all of which provide clues beyond the denotative level of what was intended by the communication (Compton & Galaway, 1994, pp.309-310).
The Fundamentals of Drawing: Being Immersed in Process
In the introduction to his book, Learning to Draw, Kaupelis speaks of the fundamentals of drawing.
Rather than regarding the fundamentals of drawing in terms of such values as photographic realism, accurate perspective, smooth finish and technique, many of us now feel that the following factors--and related values--constitute the fundamentals and that all else will follow naturally (Kaupelis, 1983, p.13).
Kaupelis cites eight fundamentals of drawing: concepts, confidence, sensitivity, materials, art history, flexibility, understanding and originality. We can reason that if social workers follow our fundamentals practice principles and values that we will be closer to helping our clients "enhance or restore their capacity for social functioning and to create societal conditions favorable to their goals" (Hepworth & Larson, 1993, p.3).
I have applied Dr. Kaupelis' framework to the practice of social work. As the art student cannot learn to draw simply by reading about techniques and process (Kaupelis, 1983, p.3) neither can the social work intern learn practice skills through classroom dialogue and reading alone. As the artist must "wed themself to their sketchbook to truly learn to draw" (Kaupelis, 1983, p.13), the field experience in social work provides the practitioner with an infinite variety of landscapes of the human condition.
The individual within the context of their social environment ultimately creates their own art if given the fundamentals. Alex Comfort (1946) wrote, "All creative works speak on behalf of somebody who would otherwise be voiceless" (Rapoport, 1975, p.7). Social work practitioners must continue to be at the helm as social and political agents of change. Our clients will not have the opportunity to create their own art, to find expression for their natural aptitudes and skills, unless afforded the fundamental tools with which to negotiate their environment.
We speak in social work about the process of change and the steps of the problem-solving process. The development of this essay has, in fact, been just such a process for me. In preparation for writing, my readings and reflections informed me as to how subjectivity colors the lens through which I see my social environment. My original essay was entitled Art as a Selfobject Experience: Understanding the Creative Personality. I began to think about my own selfobject experience (Kohut, 1971) working in the field of social work. I reflected on how each of us, artist and "non-artist", own a unique set of creative abilities and capacities. I retitled my essay. It now read: Creativity and Perception: "Seeing" Uncertainty as an Opportunity for Client and Practitioner Growth. It focused on issues of sensitivity and empathy and their mutual relationship to both practitioner and patient. In struggling to integrate these issues I thought about how my sensitivity and confidence as a trained visual artist conterpointed my uncertainty as a fledgling social work intern. It was then that I arrived at my essay topic: Learning to Draw in the Art of Social Work.
The last sentence of Kaupelis' (1983) introduction to Learning to Draw states: "And now what you must do is draw and draw and look at drawings and draw and draw and draw and look at drawings and draw. . ." (Kaupelis, 1983, p13). Dr. Kaupelis' techniques offered me new learning opportunities, personal and artistic growth. In order to maximize my learning I discarded my comfortable facade of "capable artist" and my avoidance of risk. Instead, I became the "work in progress." I relinquished my concern about "making good art," focusing instead on the process of the experience. I immersed myself in my drawings, daring to give up expectations of success. This freed me to begin exploring and experiencing my art and myself more fully. My feelings of exhilaration, surprise, excitement and uncertainty about process replaced the expectation I once placed on product. Through a gloriously freeing experience of self-expression and self-discovery I began to create images with a new fervor and a definitive artistic style. Long gone was the capable artistic self who had first entered Kaupelis' class, and in her place resided the student with a newfound capacity to develop creatively.
Kaupelis, R. (1980). Experimental Drawing. New York: Watson-Guptil.
________ (1983). Learning to Draw: A Creative Approach to Drawing. New York: Watson-Guptill.
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| OTHER INFO |
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carolmorrison@mindspring.com
718 930 6543 |
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| SCHOOL INFO |
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