Field-Event Theory
What is a field? In Phil Paratore’s book, Art And Design a field is “ A field consists of a set of characteristics which are uniform in time and space. A field is a family, a community, a commonality, and a concord. An ocean is a field. A meadow is a field. Environments in general are fields. Culture is a field; so is the printed page or a painter’s blank canvas. Fields are uniform homogeneous, integrated, continuous, consistent and constant.” A Shibui is all of these things too! “ Fields are organized on the basis” that there is harmony. “They consist of elements that are alike, that share the same characteristics and are more or less equal: no part of a field is any more important than any other part. Fields are non-hierarchical systems of organization.” This applies to the Shibui foundation. I could not put it better!
As you work a foundation and find the commonalities in it you start finding what is there. Your goal is to make the relationships work as a whole. The shape might be off, or odd but using the rules of Shibui you make the shape work. When making an animal or person for example those first containing lines (the outline of the found image) appears cartoon-like until you start creating dimension with shading. This cartoon-like shape is often like what you drew as a child. Meaning it appears in its simplest form. However, worked it takes on another quality. It comes to life! It will be a range of artistry from cartoon-like to realistic or it will be a 2 D abstraction unless created as 3 D.
Harmony is when all the visual elements work together in a Shibui, or with other artworks. These elements of harmony have some sort of logical relationship. I call this commonality, in the case of Shibui foundations. The relationships move forward in a progression that works. The foundation tells you what it needs.
Field-Event Relationships
“A field-event relationship consists of two sets of characteristics which are differentiated in time and space” (Phil’s book Art and Design.)
“An event is a differentiated element, unit, or individual: a figure, an act, or an occurrence. An event may also be described as an anti-field.” In a Shibui, the event is what is found and elaborated on, joined together by design work. It can be several units that marry as a whole or it can be large enough to be individualized. The field is the space in which everything happens, a world created from chaos. It has a sense of time and space as if it were a universe we can travel into. The events float, sit, become in this sense of space the Shibuiest and view interpret visually. The earth sits in the universe this same way, all that space around us out there!
What is in the foundation has a certain way of being. What is called a juxtaposition, there is a bond between the event and the supporting field of smaller events. This bond is where all that is within that foundation, has made its own story. What is there compliments the things it has a relationship to. With my first complete page Shibui I found a long-necked “Fragle-like” creature, much like the creatures from the TV show Fragle Rock. In the finished Shibui she is sitting on a very cute big-eyed sea monster. There are other aquatic animals that were there! So I created them. I simply found the big events, and then the smaller events around the whole 30 in. X 22 in. sheet of Rives BFK Printmaking Paper.
Anisette Studios & Shibui Fine Arts 