A lesson in STEALING FROM THE BEST, part 1

This past weekend my Lovely First Wife and I got away to Atlanta for a little R&R, part of which involved the search for The CHAIR — which we need not dwell on here.

One of the places we went was the Westside Market on Ellsworth Industrial Blvd, and there I saw the following pieces:

These are fragments of African textile art. I think they are tribal/aboriginal, but I completely forgot to record the label next to them.

Before we begin, I have a caveat: If the pieces are tribal/aboriginal, then I don’t know that I can approve of cutting the original up and selling it off as fragments. It seems disrespectful to me. Of course I do not know if that is what is going on here, but it seems likely.

In any case, our interest here is in the composition of the fragments, the abstraction of shape and form. If we approach them as art qua art, there’s a lot we can STEAL FROM.

The first part of the lesson on STEALING FROM THE BEST is an assignment: Get your art supplies and copy one or more of these. Just copy them verbatim, any medium, any level of “finished” or ABORTIVE ATTEMPT you like.

What’s that you say? You’re not a visual artist? For the purposes of this lesson, that is not important. Even if you just use your pen/pencil and your WASTE BOOK, you can do this. Just copy what you see here.

I’ll be back on Wednesday to share mine, and you can share yours in comments or email them to me.