on site review 44 : play

(for)play and wordplay YVONNE SINGER

Even as a child it was hard to play except for times at the seashore digging in the sand to the accompaniment of the reassuring roar of ocean waves. As an immigrant child, new to the English language, the game of ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back’ was an opportunity to be singled out as the only one to step on a crack. It was the same with Hide and Seek or variations of it, another game that is fraught if you do not know the rules and the language. This is the paradox of play, serious but trivial, innocent but fraught with danger. So what is the meaning of play? I thought the word and its meaning was straightforward until I began the research. The Random House Dictionary has three full columns on the word play . And there are many theories about play, from psychoanalyst D W Winnicott to game theory. There are many taxonomies of play: physical play, social play, constructive play, fantasy play, solitary play, parallel play, group play. Colloquial applications of the word play demonstrate its multidimensionality: word play, foul play, playful, co-play, f0oreplay, playoff. Play one’s card, play the game, play on. Play both ends against the middle, play fast and loose, play tricks, playing with fire, play a hunch. Play by ear, play acting, make a play for, play of light, the play’s the thing, play for time. Playbook, playback, playbill. Playpen, plaything, Playhouse, playground, play by play, playing the field. Played out, playboy, playmate, play offs. Play along. For me, play is art-making with ideas, dreams, images, words and any materials and forms that serve my purpose. Certainly my play is informed by my personal story and the aesthetic and educational environment that shaped me, but within that arena I can make my own rules and speak in my own voice. Here in this private world, I can be crazy, pragmatic, stupid, unrealistic, impossible, sentimental, nostalgic, depressed, unpredictable, bewildering — that’s all part of the process.

I offer this linguistic and artistic expression of play as it relates to the primal gesture of drawing .

drawing as sign drawing as action drawing as thought

drawing a line drawing as a language the syntax of line

And exploring drawing as gesture, as object, as metaphor, as duration, as boundary, I did a long blind drawing, a 20’ scroll, one of many elements in the 1988 installation Contradictions/ Possibilities at Niagara Artists Centre, St Catharines. The blind drawing was done more or less in one sitting. My rule was to draw using graphite, with eyes closed and using both left and right hands I am left-handed. I did not have preconceived images in mind. My interest was with automatic writing and drawing and I wondered if drawing with eyes closed would provide a more immediate access to my subconscious and so result in a more spontaneous, improvisational experience. The objective was to eliminate the gap between subconscious and conscious action and gesture. I do remember having ideas and maybe fleeting images, like thinking about the female body or feeling anger. It was a meditative and and enlightening experience which I was never able to repeat.

Yvonne Singer, The blind drawing scroll . graphite, 30” x 20’, detail. Excerpted from Contractictions/Possibilities , Niagara Artist Centre, St Catharines, 1988 mp4 in dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ dkpixinvoyo1uvypgxfgr/Yvonne-blind-drawing-inverted. mp4?rlkey=ax11igk5fq6p7ilvk0u412y54&dl=0

Yvonne Singer

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