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Feed the body food and drink, it will survive today. Feed the soul art and music, it will live forever.
— Julie Andrews
Jammin’ is a series of abstract music visualizations that capture the rhythm of the music as well as the flow-state that the jams put me into. For me they are a visual synthesis of music and dance—the music comes into my body, and I express it kinetically as my brushes and tools dance and splash across the page.
Music is very important in my life. It helps me get in touch with my feelings, expresses what I cannot. I’ve got playlists for different times of day, different moods, and different seasons. I LOVE a good kitchen dance party with my kids as much as I still love going out to a club to dance ‘till I drop. We take our kids to music festivals (I think they’ve seen more live music than I had well into my adulthood). But I did grow up with music, my parents always had music playing. They had an extensive and eclectic CD collection and were early adopters of the whole house music system with speakers wired into the ceiling of every room. In grade school I played the piano and the drums (both rhythm instruments) but ultimately, I connected more viscerally to rhythm by moving my body to it, rather than playing it.
Dance was the first art form that I studied seriously. I danced and performed from childhood, through college and into my late 20's. Through dance I had my first experiences of a real flow-state and discovered the ecstatic joy of hurling my body through space. In college visual art became intimately connected to dance as my cohort dived headfirst into multi-media experimental dance. We played with feedback loops and made sound sensitive stages. I made a film of my own charcoal figure animation (a la William Kentridge) for a background in one show and had a friend hand paint the costumes for another. I danced in a plastic box while another artist painted the outside of the box with my gestures, ultimately obscuring the dance within. I began choreographing dance for the camera and spent more and more time on the computer editing my films. This ultimately led me to my career in graphic design.
We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.
— Albert Einstein
My first real "adult" job was as a graphic designer for the internationally renowned Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival—an international mecca of modern dance in the Berkshires. There I had the best dance in the world as creative input for my artistic output. I continued designing for dance, theatre, and non-profits for the majority of my career. But over the years I danced less, and when I move to the Seattle and had kids I lost touch with dance as a form of creative expression.
This past fall I signed up for an over 40 dance class, it was my first real dance class in more than 15 years and boy was it amazing! It just so happened that class was the night before my regular studio painting class. And within a few weeks I watched my painting transform before my eyes from the calm meditative imagery that poured out of me in my Shmita year, to much more gestural and kinetic work. I found myself wanting to put on music in the studio and boogie around, so I ran with it and began this series of Jammin’ music visualizations.
Each painting was created while listening to a specific live recording (listed in the painting description). Whether or not you already have a connection to the piece of music that inspired my painting I hope you can relate to the work through pattern and color.
