Paper in the Floodplain
and other instructions for drawing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48619/bbds.v7i1.A1422Keywords:
drawing time material eventscore invisible paper performanceAbstract
This essay will bring together a body of work that attempts to capture human performance and natural phenomena on paper as a way of drawing and scoring encounters with place. In what ways do place (and land) escape our efforts to represent and capture it, while simultaneously embedding its temporal marks, ciphers, and imprints? In this essay, drawing is a mode of listening and attuning to change and a way to care and collaborate with land, that enables artists to reflect on environmental constraints and shifting landscapes. The drawings in this essay are works that engage with sites in transition - seasonal floodplains, coastal range watersheds, weather patterns, and other material flows, to ask, how can drawing guide movement and pathways toward a way of understanding and caretaking of the land, past, present, and future?
Downloads
References
Alloway, L. (1974). Michelle Stuart: a fabric of significations. Artforum, 12(5), 63-66
Badenoch, K. (2024). Un-choreographing the drawing: conversation in, on, and with the land. In —in Drawing: Inquiry, Time, Dialogue and Materiality. (Kenneff and Lévesque, Eds.). (pp 148-153). Bureau d’étude de pratiques indisciplinées, École de design, UQAM.
Berger, J. (2007). Berger on Drawing (2nd ed). Occasional Press.
Bolender, K (2020). The Unnaming of Aliass. Punctum Books.
Carlson, B. (2016). Time trace: A drawn perception. Drawing Research, Theory, Practice, 1(2), 223-234. https://doi.org/10.1386/drtp.1.2.223_1
Creates, M. (2017). In Places, paths, pauses: Marlene Creates. (Garvey and Kunard, Eds.). (p 22). Beaverbrook Art Gallery.
Garvey, S.G. (2017). Written in the land, present in the place. In Places, paths, pauses: Marlene Creates. (Garvey and Kunard, Eds.). (pp 15-21). Beaverbrook Art Gallery.
Griffiths, R.P. (2013). Disturbance effects on soil processes in the Andrews Experimental Forest (1995 Stand Age Study) ver 7. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/0cf569d70a0141e552c34b2424ba46d6 (Accessed 2026-04-01).
Lippard, L. (2014). Undermining: a wild ride through land use, politics, and art in the changing west. The New Press.
Parson, A.B. (2022). The Choreography of Everyday Life. Verso.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge Classics )i.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The Primacy of perception. (J.M. Edie, Trans). Northwestern University Press.
Munroe, A. (1994). Japanese art after 1945: scream against the sky. Harry N Abrams, Inc.
Roelstraete, D (2010). Richard Long: a line made by walking. Afterall Books.
Solnit, R. (2003). Dirt. In As eve said to the serpent: on landscape, gender, and art. University of Georgia Press.
Taylor, B. (2009). Absurd lines, protest walks: notes on Richard Long. Sculpture Journal 18(2), 176-188. https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2009.5
Wallander, H. (2014). Soil: reflections on the basis of our existence (G. McIver and N. Tyszkiewicz, Trans.). Springer International Publishing.
Yoshihara, J. (2013). Gutai art manifesto (T. Reiko, Trans). In Gutai: splendid playground.(Munroe and Tiampo, Eds.). (pp18-19). Guggenheim Museum Publications. (Original work published 1956 in Geijutsu Shincho. 7(12). 202-204).
