Informal Archive - all Drawings

 

Line in Relation to Body

 Line in relation to body.

Lead, Claire Lahey, 2024

In this project, I had an immediate idea the second I was given the prompt. I tied this to skating, the lines my blades make in the ice. I love to skate, and I can in quite creative ways. I’ve always admired figure skaters, and wanted to be one. However my compete for outweighs my grace, and I stick to ringette. I love to do to frozen lakes in winter, and goof off with jumps and moves. I am quite skilled, I have skated since I was 3 and played ringette since I was 5. I have spent so much of my life dedicated to this sport, even morning before school for power skating for years. I have had multiple shoulder traumas, and have had a surgery on each shoulder over 2 years. I have had to take 2 years off of ringette due to this, and I have had phases of resentment with ringette. Upset about how much of my free time it takes up, the pressure to perform, family stress, coach stress, and at the time it truly felt like the center of the world. After taking the years off, I really missed it, but more so I missed the activity and the outlet. This year, I have gotten to fall back into the sport, and really enjoy it without so much pressure. Even my family tells me how silly they feel about how big it was in our life’s years ago. I have realized that skating especially, is a place where I feel so very much life me. I feel so free, fast and agile and I just love it, it feels what I’d image flying to feel similar to. 

Me in the process

In a way, I feel this way to art. I love to perform, and I love to perform good. It’s a strange quality that’s a bit unique to others of mine, but it’s one I acknowledge. I love art, to create and to do so in unique,  colorful, expressive ways. I feel similar about skating, I want to be able to perform in unique and expressive ways. Due to these reasons, the two instantly connected in my head. 

This felt a bit unique to me, as I’ve always felt different than a lot of people I am close with. Most of my friends are athletes, or into arts. I rarely am close with people who are passionate about and understand both like I do. While this is not something I mind, I sometimes feel quite alone, and overwhelmed. Lately, I’ve noticed my two worlds are crossing a bit more. My team and coach came, in their own knowledge, to my murals unveiling event. 

Result - 

I had the class use any writing tool and printer paper to trace where they visualize my path of movement as a line while watching the video. It was very different to experience skating, then to watch the video back. It was confusing and fast, and honestly challenging to follow. I slowed the video a small amount and showed that one first, in hopes to make it easier to follow along. I then showed the fast one and asked the class  to trace that one too. My idea was experimenting with how movement of the body is interpreted differently, and I wanted a visual way to show that.