Asemic Writing: Expressive Mark Making through Invented Text
By Sheila Ceccarelli, inspired by Sue Gough
It was not until I read Sue Gough‘s moving ‘I Am AccessArt‘ post that I came across the word ‘asemic’.
‘Asemic’, the way I understand it, describes the text that infants write before they can form letters; the narrative formed by the use of descriptive mark making. Asemic writing is an expressive form of writing that can only be interpreted by the viewer with the tools of instinct, empathy, intuition and emotion. This is how I introduced ‘asemic’ to teenagers, aged 12 to 17, at my drawing class last week.
I have to thank Sue for the most amazing session. I was deeply touched by the teenagers’ ability to interpret the task and create highly personal and distinctive ‘narratives’ of their own.
To access all content, I would like to join as…
An Individual
Creative practitioners, educators, teachers, parents, learners…
An Organisation...
Schools, Colleges, Arts Organisations: Single and Multi-Users
AccessArt is a UK Charity and we believe everyone has the right to be creative. AccessArt provides inspiration to help us all reach our creative potential.
Rivka Ozersky
January 22, 2014 @ 2:34 am
Was this project completed in one session?
How much time is each session?
Sheila Ceccarelli
January 22, 2014 @ 1:24 pm
Yes – this was all completed in one session. Sessions are an hour and a quarter on a weekday evening.
This is a very motivated and able group who are very receptive and tuned into to expressing themselves through drawing processes. It would be very interesting to see outcomes from this exercise in a class room situation.
Many thanks,
Sheila
Rivka Ozersky
January 23, 2014 @ 5:58 am
Thank you for your reply.
My question was prompted by the palpable intensity and concentration of the students in the pictures and their astonishing results.
My main challenge is the limitation of time: 45 minutes class time, including introduction, demonstration, work time and clean up…with eleven year old 5th graders in the morning.
Thanks a lot,
Rivka
Sheila Ceccarelli
January 23, 2014 @ 10:13 am
Rivka,
I think it’s very possible that this workshop will work very well with eleven year olds. I think you should split it over two sessions. The first session introduce;
1. the idea of writing without forming actual words – I imagine that eleven year olds will need persuading NOT to use actual words – but I think could be simplified to them by giving them an example of the theme of the writing i.e imagine writing an thank you letter or angry letter or a sweet message or an explanation of real life event with words formed not by letters but by emotion and rhythmic movements. I think they’ll respond well,
2. offer a range of materials to enjoy this process with, i.e ink and nib or ink and brush, soluble pencils, whether they be coloured or graphite with water,
3. introduce the idea of landscape and portrait paper and length and shape of paper – i found that this was critical for the success of my own session – children loved working on unconventional size, shape and scale paper.
In the second session you can revisit the work and experiment with building a layered drawing and collage using the original images – have a look at this post by Sue Gough for that session /sue-gough-making-a-layered-drawing/
Hope that helps – PLEASE let me know how it goes and document the process (with permission from the participants!) – Really good luck and thank you.