Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Simpler & Friendlier ButohDrawing

Okay, I want to say it a little bit differently --
‘The space around you’ in butohdrawing can be focused-in from its Peripheral experience to its Central Experience, a much smaller frame, kind of like a telescope zooming in on something. When somebody’s reading or working on the computer their attention zooms into what they’re working on and the peripheral experience of the real surrounding space vanishes. They’re in a completely different space.

Sometimes it’s called pictorial space or ‘virtual,’ where the image on a literally flat computer monitor turns into a wonderful virtual or fantasy space in which the imagination’s creativity explores and invents.

In ButohDrawing the goal is to grasp the peripheral space and deploy the imaginary space that’s inside us – no script – not somebody else’s program, not a video game. It’s a Paradoxical space that’s far away from ordinary everyday Doxa or “reality.” This experience then, is active:::> movement of one kind or another happens.


TW aka bUtom


Tom White
Professor Emeritus
California College of the Arts CCA


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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

ButohDrawing ~ looking through the frame


looking through the frame


‘The space around you’ in ButohDrawing (I was talking about it in my previous blog) can be narrowed down from its
peripheral experience to its opposite, Central Experience, like reading, a logical, left-brain mode. This much narrower frame of reference could be a photograph, a book page, the lens of a camera or an image when someone is working on it in Photoshop.
When the artist is working in ButohDrawing the only space s/he is aware of is visually limited by the format of h/er focused awareness. This awareness may be situated in virtual reality or even in the left-brain domain that is created when one is reading, like an escape from reality into another, quite different reality, what’s sometimes called ‘pictorial space,’ where perceived depth is an actual space that doesn’t seem anything but real.
So the drawing aspect in ButohDrawing can be thought of as an extraction, like rendering bacon fat, all the fat is extracted leaving the meat to stand alone. In ButohDrawing everything ‘s being pulled out of what’s around you, and your experience of your center is profound, something like a substance that makes you feel ALL your power – Chi. ButohDrawing can be like walking meditation when you’re doing it right, but it’s NOt that, it’s art, it’s cultural, it’s work and discipline.

TW aka bUtom


Tom White
Professor Emeritus
California College of the Arts CCA



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