In a Masterclass with visual artist Barnaby Barford, Art&Design Club members from MIMA School of Art & Design at Teesside University created a collaborative ‘love’ word-drawing for the people of Ukraine.
Starting with a slide show of Barnaby’s work, Club members were introduced to methods such as surrealist automatism, (allowing the unconscious mind to influence the creation of a piece), and word drawings (abstract pictures compromising of the same hand-written word written over and over).
Members created their own word pieces, challenging themselves in a multitude of ways. They swapped work, used their less-dominant hand, closed their eyes, or spontaneously changed their medium (pen, crayon, pencil).
After brainstorming from a given theme of ’love,’ members arrived at the idea of creating a large collaborative piece: creating a flag from the repeated use of the word love. While music played, members used the colours yellow and blue to represent Ukraine.
One Club member remarked, “when the music changed, my feelings and style changed too.” Others described the Masterclass as “super messy but awesome!” and “magical.”