Cover photo courtesy of Martyna Alexander.“Map Of An Unknown Emotion” (detail) - M. Alexander. 30x19x.75”. Acrylic, oil pastel, and colored pencil on cotton canvas.
Featured throughout the issue courtesy of Jen Fitzpatrick are selected film stills from her work, “The Hegemony of the Nonsensical.”
Faculty Research
S. LaPorte & C. Reichert Amalgamation
Process
Fantasy
Cohesion
Levity
Dichotomy
Resources
PLUME is a publication by the College for Creative Studies Library connecting community to information.
It aims to disrupt linear research models by offering a uniquely interconnected approach to resources stemming from one single conceptual point.
Faculty Research E. Oakes
Interview C. Triano
Interview R. Dziurgot
Interview
E. Rutt
Article
M. Alexander
List
CCS Library
PLUME is headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and was established in 2021.
201 E. Kirby Street Detroit, Michigan 48202
313.664.7642 library@ccsdetroit.edu
Editor’s Note
To attempt to define the idea of play is, frankly, a fool’s errand. Play, by nature, is difficult to pin down. It is both an action to be taken and a feeling to be evoked. It is serious, yet it also requires an inherent silliness. It is a powerful tool, giving us the freedom to fail spectacularly and unselfconsciously, yet also an ephemeral one—a soap bubble that pops when handled with too much force.
For artists and designers, play can take on a kaleidoscopic quality, casting new colors and forms onto old frameworks, changing their meaning and our own perspectives in the process. In its many overlapping and contradicting manifestations, play is a crucial component of creation. Despite the malleable quality of play, or maybe because of it, thoughts on playfulness and its role in
art and design can be mined from almost every corner of the creative world.
The content of our fifth issue of PLUME is a testament to the interdisciplinary presence of play in art and design. In it, we explore how play is approached across varying fields of practice, whether fine art, communication design, game design, filmmaking, or photography. Through the format of imagery and interviews, voices from the thriving community of Detroit creators are situated alongside a curation of complementary library resources. Through this combination, we hope to inspire readers to consider and delight in the myriad meanings and modes of play and playfulness. •
“The Fish, Hegemony of the Nonsensical” - J. Fitzpatrick, 2019. Wood, found objects, wood dye, fabric. 20x20”.
“The Child, Hegemony of the Nonsensical” - J. Fitzpatrick, 2019. Wood, found objects, wood dye, fabric. 20x20”.
“A Dictionary of Abbreviations” - S. LaPorte & C. Reichert, 2024.
Amalgamation
Susan LaPorte & Chad Reichert
Susan LaPorte and Chad Reichert are two accomplished communication design professors who share a love for typography, letterforms, and graphic blandishments along with a passion for weird antiquated dictionaries. The intersection of these interests is where their collaborations center. They enjoy working together on short-term projects that embrace spontaneity and play, keeping them engaged in the art (and joy) of making.
Two of their recent collaborations include Mrs Byrnes Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words; and A Dictionary of Abbreviations complied by Herbert John Stephenson. Both dictionaries were randomly found at the John King Bookstore located in the historsic Otis Elevator building in downtown Detroit. Susan and Chad embraced rules of chance with a little serendipity to build a collection of letters and abbreviations based on the contents of their respective books. With the intention of designing for a two-week span, these projects manifested themselves into a collaboration that has spanned several years. The outcomes of these projects included print ephemera, book design, textiles, and motion. The culmination of these efforts resulted in being chosen
to co-present at TypeCon 24 this past summer in Portland, Oregon.
The goal is to share these projects to serve as a catalyst to foster collaborative projects among faculty in higher education. In a postpandemic environment, faculty members have been impacted in various ways, including a heavier teaching load, reduced funding for faculty development, and shifting demographics with a greater need for emotional support. As faculty, it’s crucial to find ways to rebuild college faculty communities, rethink methods of making, and model playful collaborative practices that students can learn and grow from. •
Susan LaPorte is Chair and Professor of Communication Strategy & Design at the College for Creative Studies. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and her BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Chad Reichert is a Professor of Communication Strategy & Design at the College for Creative Studies and founder of spirit3design, a multidisciplinary design practice based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
@mrsbyrnestype
@laportesusan
@chad_reichert
References
“Salted Paper Process,” The Historic New Orleans Collection. https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/daguerreotype-digital/saltedpaper-process
“The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds,” American Academy of Pediatrics, Volume 119, Issue 1, January 2007. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/119/1/182/70699/The-Importance-of-Play-inPromoting-Healthy-Child
“Convention on the Rights of the Child,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. Adopted 20 November, 1989. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instrumentsmechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child
“Play for Adults,” National Institute of Play. https://nifplay.org/play-for-you/make-playpart-of-an-adult-life/
Left: “Balancing Act (3)” - E. Oakes, 2022. Salted paper print made with breastmilk. 9x13.5”.
Right: “Balancing Act (2)” - E. Oakes, 2022. Salted paper print made with breastmilk. 9x13.5”.
P rocess
Eleanor Oakes
One can only admire the miracle of life for so long before boredom eventually sets in. I sat on the floor of my infant son’s room, watching him wriggle on his back. Time passed… strangely. Days merged from one to the next, each melting into the other as one foggy memory, and yet one hour and then the next could drag on endlessly. I needed something to focus on but my brain was hazy from weeks, months, of sleep deprivation. My hands migrated to a set of blocks my son’s hands were still too tiny to grasp. I stacked them, one on top of another, seeing how high they could reach before the tower crashed around us both. Then started again.
This practice became a type of mindless meditation. A challenge, a ritual, a focal point. A return to play in a moment when my adult responsibilities had just escalated to include keeping this other human alive. These teetering towers were metaphors, symbols of our societal pressures to balance our work and home lives, our public and private selves. We stack more and more responsibilities until the tower eventually falls.
Play is precious. Too often we take it for granted, sidelining it in favor
of ever more rigorous academic curriculums, extracurriculars, jobs, chores. But play is so important in a child’s development that it is ensconced by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a fundamental right for every child.1 Play is crucial for physical, cognitive, and emotional development, and helps young people build their creativity, imagination, and dexterity. Adults need play as well, although it can be harder to come by and more nuanced.2 Perhaps one of the best lessons we can learn from play is that free-form play does not have specific goals, and so there are no metrics for success or failure. You don’t ask a child to play faster, nor slower. There’s no timeline, only process, and a general enjoyment of that process.
A similar journey can be found through experimentation. We experiment to see what happens, to observe, to push limits. A child stacks blocks only to delight in kicking them over. They aren’t precious with their creation or hesitant of failure, they are only testing what works, and what doesn’t. As adults, we can learn from this spirit. Too often we are solely focused on an end product and not present in the journey, the process. These photographs were made using
my breastmilk as a salting solution in the historic salted paper process, one of the first photographic processes ever invented. Attempting this technique with breastmilk involved lengthy trials of experimentation, as well as heavy research in historical, contemporary, and scientific references. I slowly discovered what worked and what didn’t, building a framework to improve upon, over and over, for more than a year.
The pleasure in working on something you care about is akin to play. It is joyful. The act of making these prints brought me be back into the darkroom after the confluent times of becoming a mother and living through a global pandemic. I relearned how to be myself, how to be an artist, and how to be a mother through rediscovering play. The resulting images construct the series, milk and tears , eighty prints that physically process this transition. Using breastmilk as the salting solution adds bodily labor to the prints and a uniquely feminist narrative into the history of photography. The still lifes of toy blocks reconnect to play and remind us of the “balancing act” we all do on a daily basis. Together process and form underline the tensions in how we consider labor in relationship
to pleasure, and how our perception of both continually changes throughout our lives. •
1 “Convention on the Rights of the Child,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. Adopted 20 November, 1989. https://www.ohchr.org/en/ instruments-mechanisms/instruments/conventionrights-child
2 “Play for Adults,” National Institute of Play. https://nifplay. org/play-for-you/make-play-part-of-an-adult-life/
Eleanor Oakes is a photographic artist based in Detroit, Michigan. An Assistant Professor of Photography at the College for Creative Studies, she is also the founder of Darkroom Detroit, a local nonprofit that increases access to photography and visual literacy.
www.eleanoroakes.com @eleanoroakes
“Balancing Act (4)” - E. Oakes, 2022. Salted paper print made with breastmilk. 9x13.5”.
“The Builder, Hegemony of the Nonsensical” - J. Fitzpatrick, 2019. Wood, found objects, wood dye, fabric. 20x20”.
“The Archivist, Hegemony of the Nonsensical” - J. Fitzpatrick, 2019. Wood, found objects, wood dye, fabric. 20x20”.
F antasy
Cinnamon Triano
Cinnamon Triano is a documentary filmmaker and artist living in Detroit. In 2012, she received her BFA in video and film arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland.
www.cinnamon.world @cintv
PLUME: How does the concept of play influence your creative process and approach to art making? Are there specific techniques or methods that you employ to foster experimentation and spontaneity in your work?
Cinnamon Triano: Well, in my everyday life, I am a field producer and a story producer for different Netflix documentaries, and just documentaries in general. The photo work that I do is completely different. It’s based on imagined spaces, places, and sometimes just set completely in a fantasy world. It became sort of a coping mechanism, I guess, to just fall into and take my mind elsewhere for a few fleeting moments. Probably the most important part of the portrait series is just playing dress up, and putting on fun outfits to become different characters. I’ve always loved collecting vintage clothes and going to estate sales and imagining who that person was, you know? Looking at all of the things and trying to create the story of their life and their experiences. I just love being able to play and create stories with different outfits and beautiful clothing. So it really starts with that, I will imagine the person that I want to be in the photo and then I’ll start playing around with the backdrops.
Photo courtesy of Cinnamon Triano
During quarantine, I decided to set up a photo studio in my laundry room just to play around with different equipment I’ve collected, like film cameras, lighting gear, and all that stuff. I just wanted to experiment and try to make my own photo studio. However, because it is such a small studio space, I had to kind of experiment by taking these self portraits, cutting myself out of the photos and pasting them into
“
At the same
time I love it
because it’s
weird, and it’s
kind of work
exactly the that I want
to create.”
hand-drawn and collaged backgrounds which really helped to create the imagined space or environment that I would place myself into. Some of the other elements are found in slides that I scanned and would cut different elements out [of], like flowers and animals. It’s just been very fun to play around and create images from different elements that have come from completely different time periods. Like some of it is stuff from film or photos I’ve taken 15 years ago, and it will be pasted in the background like little secret easter eggs.
P: Art is a form of play that often involves exploration and experimentation. Can you share a specific instance where embracing a playful mindset allowed you to break free from creative constraints or traditional conventions, leading to a novel artistic expression?
C: The photo series really took off during quarantine. I think the reason that it kicked off so much for me was because I really wanted to physically go to new spaces, but I couldn’t. I had to imagine these fantasy worlds and environments, and just put myself there. It was a way for me to transport myself into some sort of fantasy world, and for a fleeting moment, just forget the stress of the world.
In my earlier self portraits, I had moved to Los Angeles in 2015 for a job working on documentary films. I was so inspired by the different landscapes there, and I often would drive and drive and drive until I saw, you know, remnants of a wildfire and it would be completely burned out trees and the ground is completely desolate and cleared out. I just had never seen anything like that. So yeah, during that time it was a great way to escape and get to know my new home. I definitely have been caught in various silly situations, like wearing ball gowns on the side of mountains in Utah, and people being like, what is going on? But I just have to swallow my pride and my embarrassment and just do it. This work is all about adventure, whether it takes me on an adventure in real life by driving to find cool landscapes and environments, or an adventure into fantasy land.
P: Playfulness can be seen as a departure from seriousness, yet it also opens doors to innovation and uninhibited expression. How do you balance the notion of playfulness with the desire to convey messages or evoke emotions through your artwork? Can playfulness enhance or detract from the seriousness of your artistic intent?
C: There are elements in some of the photos that are very serious to me and are like secret messages, but overall, the whole series is just about play. I definitely think playfulness enhances my work because that’s really what it’s all about. I get to take elements from my childhood, things that I was so massively influenced by: animators and children’s books. Just the element of playing dress up itself is really healing to my inner child and all of that. But yeah, for this aspect of my creative work, it really is all play. It brings me back to that same headspace of being completely uninhibited as a kid. It becomes how I keep my life in balance between the high pressure and the high stakes of my job.
There was a time where I almost deactivated the photo series on my website, because I was in between film projects. I thought, is this work too silly? Is it too weird? Will I get judged for this? But in reality, it’s just such a genuine expression of who I am. It is scary to have it out in the world, because it makes me feel so vulnerable. At the same time I love it because it’s weird, and it’s exactly the kind of work that I want to create. So I’ve never taken that stuff off my social media or my website, because it is me, that’s the whole package of me.
If you want this high powered, bosslady producer, you also have to know that I’m silly, hyper, and playful too. It’s important to me to create work environments that are very serious about creating high quality work, but are also a fun, great place, and very supportive. I hope that my work also inspires people to be completely who they are, have fun, and that they create work that includes personal elements of who they are. •
Resources
Cindy Sherman: A Play of Selves
C. Sherman TR647 .S468 2007
Art-Based Research in the Context of a Global Pandemic
U. Seregina, A. Van den Bossche N85 .A78 2023
Beyond the Face: New Perspectives on Portraiture
W. W. Reaves N7575 .B49 2018
The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History
J. Hall N7618 .H35 2014
C ohesion
Ryan Dziurgot
PLUME: How does the concept of play influence your creative process and approach to art making? Are there specific techniques or methods that you employ to foster experimentation and spontaneity in your work?
Ryan Dziurgot: I’ve been working on Overwatch 2 for the past couple of years, and about a year ago I got the opportunity to become a lead VFX (Visual Effects) artist. Originally, I was a lead for PvE (Player versus Environment), but now I’m lead on Rewards. I think when working on video games, especially making VFX for video games, play comes pretty naturally. When you see an explosion in a game, or just anything that seems magical, that’s probably something I would touch. There’s really no one way to solve issues a lot of the time, and you have to get really creative to solve technical problems or get around hardware limitations or design constraints. A lot of what I do is kitbashing. I think that helps a ton. Kitbashing is what you would do when you run into an issue with an effect that’s not working the way that you want it to work. Trying to come up with something from scratch is pretty hard, and when you’re in development, you work on stuff that has a huge library of existing assets. So rather
Ryan Dziurgot is a Lead VFX Artist at Blizzard Entertainment, currently working on the game “Overwatch 2.” An alumnus of the College for Creative Studies, Ryan has worked for studios like Jumpstart, Hi-Rez, and Cryptic.
Photo courtesy of Ryan Dziurgot
than spending a ton of time draining yourself creatively trying to come up with something from scratch, you just grab everything that you want and start slamming stuff together. You kind of
“Knowing the really good,
see what works or doesn’t work really fast. I’m not going to create the same muzzle flash over and over again from scratch. I’m going to use an existing one that I already did or that someone else already did, and start from there.
P: Art is a form of play that often involves exploration and experimentation. Can you share a specific instance where embracing a playful mindset allowed you to break free from creative constraints or traditional conventions, leading to a novel artistic expression?
because then
how to break
you know them, or find
get away rules is
what you can with.”
R: Any project you work on, you’re going to have a huge library of assets, unless you’re literally the first person working on it. Which, in that case, you’re working from scratch, but with a ton of textures and other VFX that other people have made. It really opens you up, because you might have ideas in your head and it could take forever to start getting them on paper, only to realize it doesn’t work. But if you have things you could pull from, then you can get something together really fast, before you get into the final polish phase and figure out what works or doesn’t work. You might see something and think, oh, that might be really good for this, but I would have never thought to try that myself. VFX is a good mix of artistic and technical skills, and we use
a lot of numbers. So there are certain numbers that I’ll specifically use instead of others. There are also certain ways that I might draw or paint textures compared to how someone else might that has my own influence in it, and those are just from techniques I’ve picked up over the years that have kind of become a habit for me. When you’re working on a game with lots of other designers, things have to look cohesive and kitbashing helps a ton with that. Instead of everyone being sort of siloed off on their own making things, everyone’s sharing things. You get this sort of amalgamation of everyone’s work that creates that cohesiveness.
P: Playfulness can be seen as a departure from seriousness, yet it also opens doors to innovation and uninhibited expression. How do you balance the notion of playfulness with the desire to convey messages or evoke emotions through your artwork? Can playfulness enhance or detract from the seriousness of your artistic intent?
R: I think this is kind of inherently a challenge in games, because there are rules to the game play and directives set by the Design team. A lot of the time you might be working on an ability for a character, and there’s a lot of stuff that you have to convey to
a player so that they understand that if I stand on a certain thing, I’m going to take damage, or maybe it’s going to heal me. If you have too much playfulness, it can kind of muddy the experience for the player, both on the receiving end and for the person using the ability, so it can definitely be hard to find balance. A lot of times I will start off by blocking in exactly what Design wants before I try and push it. Then I’ll just go to an extreme, because you might have it in your head that something won’t work, and then if you don’t try it, you’ll really never find out if it would have worked or not. I find if I just take it to an extreme, I’ll end up with more than I would have initially thought. You might have a call out from Design that there has to be a five meter AOE (area of effect), and you can’t really break that, but you can do whatever you want within the five meter AOE or circle. Color communication is really important too. If it’s something that’s going to cause damage, then you’re going to want to stick to colors that will cause damage. So if you already have other colors in your game, like healing, a lot of times it’s yellow. If you make this AOE that’s supposed to cause damage, and use a bunch of bright, different yellows, people are going to be confused and expect that it heals, right? So in those ways, you can’t
just go off on your own creatively and work outside of those rules, because that might not make sense, but you can flip it around. How else can we make it feel evil? We might add tints of red or purple. You’re communicating a lot with just simple colors. You start working on a game, and it becomes this new world with its own rules that you naturally start adhering to. And knowing the rules is really good, because then you know how to break them, or find what you can get away with. When new content comes out, you might see an ability for the first time, and it’s really fun to have a group of friends trying to decipher and figure out what the ability is doing so that you could avoid taking damage in real time. A lot of that relies on language you’ve learned from playing the game and how you think something would work intuitively. •
Contemporary Color: Theory & Use
S. Bleicher ND1488 .B575 2012
Videogames and Art
A. Clarke, G. Mitchell N7433.8 .V53 2013
Appropriation
D. Evans N6494.A66 A67 2009
Game Art M. Sainsbury GV1469.3 .S148 2015
L evity
Ellen Rutt
Ellen Rutt is a multidisciplinary, queer artist who lives and works in Detroit, and whose practice centers around painting, installations, and quilting. Rutt graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan.
www.ellenrutt.com @ellenrutt
PLUME: How does the concept of play influence your creative process and approach to art making? Are there specific techniques or methods that you employ to foster experimentation and spontaneity in your work?
Ellen Rutt: It feels like so much of my work is rooted in play, which to me is the process of unrestricted discovery and exploration. It’s like creating an environment where the outcome is unknown, where the rules are sort of flexible, where there’s a high degree of both safety and adventure. So I think that this concept exists largely for me in the process of making things but also then the quality of the work itself, and also the experience I want the audience to have. Creating an environment that’s enjoyable and centers joy is really important to me.
One of the most formative “play” techniques in my practice is quilting. I don’t sell my quilts, it’s just for fun, or for teaching and learning. With quilting there’s often a plan involved, but there’s also patchwork, or more improvisational quilting. You start by sewing two pieces of fabric together, add a third. If you don’t like it, cut it in half, add another piece. At the end, you have a giant quilt with pieces cut up. It’s chaotic, but the cutting, sewing,
Photo courtesy of Ellen Rutt
adding, cutting again, is generative. It changes the scale of things, bringing two things together, knowing if you don’t like it, you’ll cut it in half. It exists in my paintings and my personal life, the generative building of bringing things together, pulling apart when needed, cutting, rearranging—fluid, without overthinking. The point is not knowing how it’ll look, just continuing
“You can
create various
environments
that feel safe
enough for
people to leave
the same behavior until you have a quilt to bring on picnics, put on your bed, or give to a friend. When I feel the need to know how something will turn out or a loss of control, it’s helpful to have this separate way of working related to my art practice.
P: Art is a form of play that often involves exploration and experimentation. Can you share a specific instance where embracing a playful mindset allowed you to break free from creative constraints or traditional conventions, leading to a novel artistic expression?
themselves a into things.”
little bit or relax
E: Yes, and I don’t know if this is “play” exactly, but one time, I was doing this artist’s residency in New York. I was feeling all of this pressure that I had been accepted to this residency, and I needed to produce work that I felt so much internal pressure for me to make the most of this experience. I had stretched all these canvases and every time I would paint something I would hate it, and so I would paint over it. Two weeks have gone by, I have nothing to show for it and I’m stressed out. So then in a fit of anxious rage, I ripped all these canvases off the stretcher bars. I carry them outside and throw them in this giant pile of trash. Then I went on a really long walk and it’s the middle of winter, so when I came back there
was an accumulation of snow and street filth that had collected on this canvas in a way that was so beautiful. I was like, “Oh my gosh, wait, these are so much better!” So I fish them out of the trash, and I basically started this series of work where I would go around on these long walks and start tracing things in the environment, or drag the canvas on the ground and have this really unattached approach to the way the paintings were made. It truly opened up so much for me in my practice, all of a sudden I was out in the world collecting and archiving these places that I was passing and it just felt so fun. This need to be perfect, this need to have these finished products to prove I’m worthy or good became secondary to the experience of just being in a place and paying enough attention to what the environment had to offer. That level of curiosity is why I think play or play mentality is so critical.
P: Playfulness can be seen as a departure from seriousness, yet it also opens doors to innovation and uninhibited expression. How do you balance the notion of playfulness with the desire to convey messages or evoke emotions through your artwork? Can playfulness enhance or detract from the seriousness of your artistic intent?
E: I think about this a lot because, as a person, I’m both incredibly genuine and irreverent. I think that humor can be both playfulness, but also lightheartedness. It can make hard conversations easier when there’s some levity, there’s more space for hard things to be examined without so much intensity. I also think that there’s a limit to it when just being truly genuine or caring is what’s needed. I think it’s maybe more than seeking balance. I’m trying to ask, what is the work itself? What does it need from me? Am I taking myself too seriously? Am I trying too hard to make it a certain way? And if so, is the project asking for something genuine and intentional? Or is it best served through humor or play? I think that seriousness and playfulness do go hand- in- hand.
I’m working on a sculpture garden right now in Northern Michigan, and a lot of it has to do with nondirectional play and setting up land formations and these different sculptural components. One will be a birdhouse, one will be a conversation circle, one will be a stage. The environment is very emblematic of this question where it has more than one intended purpose. It can both facilitate grief discussions, and be a place to play hide-and-seek. There could be theater productions
one day, and really meaningful book reviews the next day in this place. I’m trying to see what the work itself needs most of all. I was reading about the design of childhood, and a key component of really engaging in play is that you have to feel safe enough to let go of your constraints. You have to feel safe enough to let go and let your mind wander to places that wouldn’t normally go, because it’s very hard to play if you’re nervous, or feel insecure. It becomes extremely hard to really enjoy. There’s an interesting relationship between safety and play, and how as an artist, or a maker of spaces or experiences, you can create various environments that feel safe enough for people to leave themselves a little bit or relax into things. •
Resources
Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go
S. McNiff N71 .M35 1998
The Design of Childhood
A. Lange BF717 .L36 2019
Chance M. Iversen
NX456.5.C46 C48 2010
Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible
K. Baum, A. Bayer, S. Wagstaff N6350 .U54 2016
“The Messenger, Hegemony of the Nonsensical” - J. Fitzpatrick, 2019. Wood, found objects, wood dye, fabric. 20x20”.
“The Artist, Hegemony of the Nonsensical” - J. Fitzpatrick, 2019. Wood, found objects, wood dye, fabric. 20x20”.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
C. Newport
HC79.L3 N497 2024
Braiding Sweetgrass
R. W. Kimmerer
E98.P5 K56 2013 ebook
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
J. Odell
HM851 .O374 2019
Slow Painting: Contemplation and Critique in the Digital Age
H. Westgeest
ND195 .W455 2021
Art and Healing: Using Expressive Art to Heal Your Body, Mind, and Spirit
B. Ganim
RC489.A7 G36 1999
Don’t Read This Book: Time Management for Creative People
D. Roos
HD69.T54 R66 2017 ebook
Photo courtesy of Martyna Alexander
D ichotomy
Martyna Alexander
Against a rich ultramarine background that almost evokes the undulation of waves, Detroit-based designer and painter Martyna Alexander has superimposed a few brightly colored shapes. Some of these are geometric in form, as the rectangle divided into four smaller rectangles, while others are purely gestural, a playful sweep of color exemplifying the mark of the artist. In its combination of biomorphic and geometric forms against an abstract background, the piece evokes the whimsical juxtapositions of Surrealist Joan Miro. This piece–The Room I Entered–is from 2022 and exemplifies the theme underpinning Alexander’s oeuvre: dichotomy.
Alexander’s BFA is from the University of Michigan Penny Stamps School of Art and much of her work experience has been design-focused. Her clients have included Shinola, Apple, and Astrohaus. Just before the pandemic started, Alexander temporarily moved to California to design and implement a new website for Apple’s iPad Pro. The punishing hours, however, led her to the point of burnout. Limited to the confines of Apple’s regimented branding during work hours, Alexander lacked the ability to express herself. In desperation, she went to an art supply store and purchased some
basic painting supplies to provide herself with a creative outlet. Playing with these materials had a rejuvenating effect, constrained though she was by a lack of time and materials.
“A lot of the commercial and marketing world wants consistency…viewers want consistency and consumers want consistency,” Alexander said. “And I think we all struggle when we want so badly to explore and to experiment and to play. But the expectation is that we need to be the same all the time.”
With the start of the pandemic, Alexander moved back to Michigan and continued to work remotely for Apple until her assignment wrapped, then pivoted to focus on her personal practice while reducing her clientbased design work to one to two clients at a time. Leaning back into her painting has been freeing for Alexander, who at times felt stymied and boxed in by design work. Between the grueling hours and strict brand standards, she found that her life lacked balance–between work and fun, regimentation and creativity.
“In general, my art practice is really meant to be the framework for a lifestyle that allows me to live healthfully and not get burnt out,”
“Untitled (Mount Brandon)” - M. Alexander, 2024. Acrylic on Canvas. 26x36”.
“Untitled (Bhutan-Puna Tsang Chu)” - M. Alexander, 2024. Acrylic on Canvas. 26x36”.
Alexander said. “It allows me to be challenged but also fulfilled and allows me to connect with people and live healthily and sustainably. So the work itself is just me exploring my psyche and my interests and a lot of that ends up having to do with our connection to things that maybe are more intuitive, like picking apart intuitive feelings and experiences.”
Not all of Alexander’s work is abstract; recently, she has been drawn to landscapes. A loosely painted mountain with a lake framed by raw canvas evokes Mount Brandon in Ireland, the heath a scumbled golden brown and the lake positioned between the viewer and the mountain. Superimposed over this landscape is the outline of an athletic court: four half-circles with orthogonal lines leading to a smaller rectangle in the center. Absent any people or wildlife, this work is composed of contrasts, from the looseness of the landscape to the precision of the court. This piece–Untitled (Mount Brandon)–is from Alexander’s most recent series, Courts, which exemplifies her emphasis on play and work, balancing the juxtaposition of different ideas.
“Play in [my] work really, I think, has to do with…the perfect balance of the
amount of boundaries that there are to work within and enough freedom,” Alexander said. “Even though it seems like two separate worlds, there’s actually an exact, direct through-line between the two. I constantly think in opposites.”
The Courts series explores the spare, rectilinear boundaries we superimpose on our lives to provide the parameters within which we can play and fantasize. Yet we must balance our need for play and creative expression with our need for structure and order. Indeed, too much of one and not enough of the other can quickly lead to ennui or burnout. Like the forms she explores in Courts that serve as a framework for play and exploration, Alexander sees her artistic practice as the framework for her own life. She compares it to how the structure of a calendar can also lead to openness, as in blocking off time during the day for creative exploration.
“[Courts] was also about applying rigidity to things that were more organic within our lives,” Alexander said. “So for me, the landscape both represents fantasy, but also connection and our organic and visceral feelings. And then the courts are something that we apply to our lives like the political
“Play has shown up
more in finding balance
between a very looseness
and a structuredness.
It is really about finding
a framework that allows
me to listen to myself
as well as get
[everything] done.”
“The Room I Entered” - M. Alexander, 2022. Acrylic on canvas. 46x60”.
systems, like rules that we apply, like schedules that we apply. And then even more literally, like when sports were being developed, the court was this very clear boundary, like this is where the fantasy lives and this is where the real world lives, and this is where we play and this is where we work. So it was a lot of different reasons that bring those two things together, but they are in and of themselves kind of that opposition or even the same thing a lot of times.”
Like her interest in creating structure within the landscape of her own life, her artwork provides space for her to work through both fantasy and logic simultaneously. Even her technique is a study of opposing methods, from the gestural, painterly brushstrokes in the backgrounds to the minute care required for the precise geometric forms. This is her through-line: dichotomy.
“I discovered early on that getting to the core of what you’re interested in will keep the work more in line with itself,” Alexander said. “As long as everything you’re doing is true to what you are interested in and what you believe in, if you’re exploring your beliefs and your philosophical ethical system, you actually will have
a pretty consistent through-line. If it’s just kind of surface and you’re like, ‘I want to try this style, I want to draw this thing,’ it can get a little bit crazy and meaningless. I think that is maybe what they mean by try to be consistent – try and stick to the core.”
Throughout her work, Alexander has sought and continues to seek equilibrium between the raw and the finished, the mathematical and the lyrical, the restrained and the vibrant. Finding balance between dichotomies and holding concepts that are in opposition within a single artwork are what motivate her.
“I learned that there is a thread through all of [one’s art],” Alexander said. “I think you’re inherently you when you’re making.” •
Martyna Alexander is an artist and designer based in Detroit, Michigan. Alexander is an alumnus of the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art and Design.
www.martynaalexander.art @martyna_alexander
CCS Library
Print
Design, Play, Change
Play
A. Willenborg, W. Smeenk
NK1510 .W5513 2022
M. M. Andersen
BF717 .M36 2022
The Expressive Instinct
G. Kaimal
BF408 .K2236 2023
Seductive Interaction Design
S. P. Anderson
TK5105.888 .A5285 2011
The Random Factor
M. R. Rank
BF1778 .R46 2024
Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood
J. Piaget
BF721 .P452 2001
The Trickster’s Hat: A Mischievous Apprenticeship in Creativity
N. Bantock
BF408 .B346 2014
Creativity: A Very Short Introduction
V. Glăveanu
BF408 .G53 2021
Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art
E. H. Gombrich
N7425 .G45
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul
S. Brown
BF717 .B76 2010
Expressive Type
Playing with Type
A. Fawkes
NK3600 .F693 2017
L. McCormick
Z246 .M373 2013
How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation
N. Loveless
NX280 .L67 2019 ebook
Mind the Gap: Encountering Contemporary Art Through Play
D. J. Scott ISSN: 1035-8811
Creative Practices for Visual Artists: Time, Space, Process
K. Steinbach
BF408 .S74 2018 ebook
Play: A Polyphony of Research, Theories, and Issues
L. E. Cohen, S. Waite-Stupiansky eBook
The Creative Reflective Practitioner
L. Candy
BF408 .C74 2020 ebook
Unstable Aesthetics: Game Engines and the Strangeness of Modding
