Digging into the topic of visual literacy was a fantastic learning and re-learning session for me. My purpose in teaching seasoned artists about visual literacy specifically, was to think about moving
The most important thing I learned relating to my interest in design, pattern, and tessellations, was a surprise. Humans are constantly trying to balance, neutralize and harmonize everything that we see. I think it's a way to cope with all of the visual stimuli that bombards us all the time. However, if our desire toward the end, of neutralizing, balancing, evening out - graying - has finally reached it's conclusion, there would be an eradication of senses and total neutrality; complete harmony and no contrast.
An example for me, that I experience in my two dimensional work and jewelry work, is that it is not perfect symmetry, perfect pattern, exactness that I really want to end up with. I created a tessellation a few years ago that was inked as perfectly as I could possible do. I was really excited doing it because I thought it would be fantastic to look at. It turned out to be a boring boring piece... nothing going on. Our eyes delight in finding that slight unevenness... that element that somehow moves slightly askew within a pattern. Now I know why. It plays so very nicely into working with organic botanical forms, because nature is not perfect.
While I am precise in my work and strive toward excellent craftsmanship, I try to include parts in a piece that aren't exactly symmetrical, not lined up perfectly. I am very happy about this. I don't want to make mechanical work, because it is my hand that is making it. Those imperfections, sometimes planned and sometimes not, are what my work is about ~ my handmade two dimensional and jewelry work.
