Keeping up momentum – The Garden of Earthly Delights

First (one of two) Zoom workshop held on: 28/11/20

Duration: 3 hours

Tutor: Haley Lock

Facilitator: Helen Rosemier

Overarching Padlet: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qAsyME8brulFhvA25kCHbdAVqqo6wBgY (you need OCA access to open this link)

 Individual group Padlet: https://oca.padlet.org/julia516230/6wgllqd6d9jnrh9o (you need OCA access to open this link)

This article is a write-up of my contribution and learnings from the workshops run through the OCA.

Context

The title of the workshop was from the well known painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510) by Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch.

Fig 1 – The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510)

Prior to the workshop a list of tools and materials were distributed. This consisted of the creation/sourcing of visual and physical reference related to the middle section of the painting, along with mixed media, glue, scissors and a magnifying glass.

Prework

I spent some time studying the painting and made a drawing of what interested me, primarily to become familiar with the structure of the painting and its subjects.

I think it’s a very strange painting, full of pleasure but no joy. Maybe that’s the message.

What’s interesting to me is that whilst the painting has a religious theme and is focused on man’s fall from grace, it wasn’t commissioned as religious art. This gave Bosch the freedom to be quite satirical, with many priests, monks and nuns residing in hell.

Workshop 1

The first workshop had three parts.

  1. A presentation introducing the theme and subjects
  2. A series of process steps
  3. Group working

The session was facilitated by OCA tutor Haley Lock.

The objective of the workshop was for individuals to carry out a number of visual experiments, not to make finished work.

Attendees were encouraged to photograph each step of their process and upload/share this to the Padlet.

Part 1 – Introduction

Haley presented a number of ideas and concepts that framed the workshop. The reference materials are here: https://oca.padlet.org/helen416376/7b3svqq5z1exvlbr (you need OCA access to open this link)

Part 2 – Process steps

The process steps took approximately 1-hour to complete. Haley introduced one process step at a time. The duration of each step varied, the longest being around 15-minutes.

Here is a list of instructions from memory – this may not be complete.

  1. Using scissors, cut out shapes from magazines/found images based on the colours in the painting
  2. Using coloured paper, cut out shapes from the painting
  3. Cut out three circles
  4. Scale-up one of the cutouts
  5. View one of the physical reference objects through a magnifying glass and draw what you see in one of the cutout circles
  6. Fold one of the circles in half
  7. Fold it in half again

This process generated a good quantity of materials that were taken into Part 3.

Part 3 – Group working

At this point attendees were divided into groups using Zoom. Each member of the group continued to experiment and build on the previous exercises and to share thinking and experience with others.

This worked quite well. After introducing ourselves we all got on with our experiments.

I created the following images during and for several hours after the workshop.

Workshop 2

To follow…

References

List of illustrations

Figure 1 – Bosch, Hieronymus (1510) The Garden of Earthly Delights At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights (Accessed: 28/11/20)

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