City Lit class- Inspired by Nancy Spero - Female Archetypes.

Last Monday I started this 4 week class at the City Lit.  It promises to be excellent. Nancy Spero was an artist from the US who was prolific in the 1960s and 70s and whose work was feminist and controversial, often using violent themes and ancient female forms to comment on 20th century female issues.  She was inspired by ancient female forms from a variety of historical periods and used their gestures and body language to create contemporary imagery.

Nancy Spero. Energetic Moving Women.

The class has 8 women participants - culturally diverse but all appear to be well educated, middle aged women.  The tutor, Heidi Wigmore, will be great, I think.  She comes across as a very knowledgeable, feminist, art teacher, whose work focusses on the figure.  She is an approachable feminist, and very encouraging - the last seminar I did had a very angry feminist who put me off this sort of event, but I think Heidi makes a good contrast.

Nancy Spero.  Repeated prints and bold colour.

We started last Monday with a fantastic trip to the British Museum to draw ancient female artefacts.  I find it difficult to use museums in this way on my own, but as part of a group, it was a much easier experience.  I drew using a pen and a graphite stick, as I know museums prefer non-messy media.  I was quite astonished when one group member immediately started using open bottles of coloured ink in a free, dribbly style.  Quite soon a Museum Customer Services person came up and requested this be put away.  The artworks were very lovely, but had great potential for mess.  Other people were using charcoal, which gave lovely effects, especially when viewed the following week, as facing pages had transfer printed, giving depth and body to the drawing.

The class is designed to cover:

- The meaning of female archetypes in historical, contemporary and cultural contexts.
- Visual research of examples of female figures in the British Museum collection eg. Goddess representations in various cultures including Ancient Greek, Egyptian, Asian
- The objectification of the female figure in contemporary media as part of consumer culture 
- Dynamic drawing techniques to create 'expressive' figures
- Experimental mixed media approaches to making original imagery eg collage, mono-printing, photocopying, tracing, carbon copying etc
- Using a projector to enlarge and compose drawings to make a 'drawing installation'
- Composition and juxtaposition of found images and hand-rendered images to create meaningful personal narratives.

This week we brought in contemporary images of women, and used them to create carbon copy tracings, juxtaposing, repeating, mirror imaging etc.  We were encouraged to trace images, but using our own style and gestures so the imagery became our own.  It was amazing how the images different people had chosen, and the way each person interpreted the Spero inspirations, made each artist's work different and identifiable.

Our drawings will be used in a later class to compile a multiple image on a frieze.  We were advised to use several drawings of a repeated image.  Repetition enables a message to be read.  Don't use too many different images.  Keep it simple.

It was a great class.

Nancy Spero, Sky Goddess protecting the women.