Good morning! May your day be full of happiness! Comfort and kindnesses. Coffee at hand on the right I am ready to roll! Today I will wrap up putting things away due to the displacement of adding the new equipment to the studio. The displacement is due to mounts for the overhead web cam, which is placed in the center of the floor now. I have placed a table under the camera. A boom arm for lights is coming today in the mail. I can at last teach Shibui! Means learning Premier Pro, and Light Room and I will do that by being consistent!
Joyce Hifler: “If there is something you would like to do___make it a dream and make it come true___Believe that it will with all of your heart___believe in it fully right from the start. ___Feel the success of it, keep it in view___make it an intricate real part of you___never let doubt interfere anywhere___breathe life into it, think about it and care___what happens, you know is all up to you___If you love it enough, your dream will come true!
I have been fostering, cultivating and courting my dream of Shibui Found Image Art since 2011. The day I simply wanted to be creative, and do something different! I put a piece of Reeves BFK on the floor and started applying action art techniques with watercolor. Then I said out into the studio, “OK! What’s there?” I began by studying the watercolor on the surface of the paper. The process is like finding something in the clouds or in a stain. This meant that each component of the watercolor had commonality; a relationship that made it become “something”. This “something” came directly from my mind’s imagination! Much like when I was a child looking for that “something” in what I was looking at. Or when I wanted to draw. I would quickly realize those spatters, drips, runs, blots, bleeds, on the surface turned into “something” rather quickly at times, and then at other times I would find nothing. The question was “What do I do with this?” The answer was follow the edges of what is there, and enhance it with pastel pencils__shading means shaping and dimensional shapes. Light colors took me in deeper as the viewer, and darker colors were closer, and black lines defined what I found, giving shape and separation of what was found. As I found what was there, the story of the Shibui’s foundation unfolded into the Shibui itself.
While creating those first Shibui I thought, “Anyone can have fun with this! It would make a great art therapy tool!” Then I wondered how art heals people. I knew it healed mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually as art forms do. But my curiosity is exactly how does the brain/mind work when it comes the creative process. How does imagination work? Is there something I can learn about know creating Shibui works? I continue to find the answers to these questions, and to learn if there are applicable answers. Creating Shibui has meant it needed defining, it needs terminologies that work for it. Such definitions as using the term commonality. The word relationship works as well. The term Chromatic is a second word to describe color at times such as there being a chromatic scale. A gray scale does not include color. Yet, color does have a range as does a gray scale from white to black. This is used in drawing, but what about creating shadows or the need to create dimensional shapes with color?
Shibui Found Image Art is different due to the fact that there is no under-structure. We have not drawn anything. Action art___BOOM! “It’s there!” And we have to find it if we are to turn it into something or use it as it is___.
A Shibui has a story! That story unfolds as we solve the puzzle. The mind wants to complete what it sees! The more we exercise the mind through finding what is there the more finessed this process becomes. The quicker the mind finds whats there. The mind likes choices. Turning the page on all four sides exercises the mind into the finding state. This is meditative. The meditative state brings the mind into its healing nature. The meditative mood means our minds can change the subject on the self. This happens because finding means focusing in on finding what’s there. When creating Shibui Found Image Art it is not like when we create something for a specific topic applying emotions… I am expressing my anger, my happiness, sadness….etc.
As you work your Shibui foundations. Think on these things, think about and ask questions of yourself. What is my creative process with this? Doing so will help you with your clients, those you teach, and with the creation of original Shibui’s made. Ask what more can I do with this foundation?
How can I apply other art forms to a foundation? What mediums with work? Have a lot of fun!!!! Art truly does heal! An in these times___we need to be healed! Mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually! How can we bring spirituality into Shibui more? How do we apply spirituality to art? This is yet one more good puzzle to be solved.
Best wishes! Pejj Nunes 11/23/2020
Anisette Studios & Shibui Fine Arts 