REFRAMING THE ORDINARY:

naming the moment without words

nurturing improvisational imagination and off leash curiosity

Reframing the Ordinary on zoom is a hands-on, participatory seminar for illuminating how you carry yourself within the choreography of paying attention and how that attention carries you.

Pursuing questions like how is this moment different than other moments, our days together will take you gently outside of your comfort zone, addressing ways of subverting the algorithm of habit, and focusing on the importance of risk for recognizing the fear line as the growth edge.

Constructed around a sequence of guided prompts investigating observation, bringing close attention to what is right in front of your eyes, RTO examines the relationship between curiosity and play as understood by the analytical and feeling minds.

Introducing high minded yet simplified and accessible ways of using graphic drawing language as an interrogator of experience, our working time together in an intimate group of no more than 12 participants leans toward empathically entering the saturation of the visual moment, then sending you back out into the world with an enhanced sense of wonder.

Drawing, for our purposes will not address the superficial imitation of appearances, but rather on honing the skill set needed to empathically yet analytically organize form on paper.

objectives:

• enhanced visual confidence with rapid summation of circumstances 

• closer access to drawing as a primary thought engine 

• a heightened sense of awe in the day-to-day

• trusting an emergent graphic intuition in which risk and an improvisational imagination are integral parts of your tool kit

• a more empathic connection to the choreography of the working surface and to the choreography of your decision making.

• the ability to make multiple readings of a moment

some significant questions related to the heart of the class:

• do you ever forget who you are?

• how do you see what you don’t know is there?

• are you able to find your way without knowing the way?

• can you recognize accidents as full of possibility and not accidents at all?

• are you making it up as you go or following tried and tested formulas?

• are you afraid of being wrong and instead play it safe?

• how many questions can go unanswered and which ones receive your attention?

we’ll explore large themes like:

• the dynamics of the visual playing field on your paper

• the nature of line and mass

• the meanings of simplification

• how time impacts decision making

• the reshaping of expectations

• the impact of conditioning

• where to begin and why

• the overall palpability and malleability of the working surface as a choreography of form.

No matter what kind of design or art you are involved with, this class will bring you closer to your eyes and to your inner eye and how they root you in the possibilities of the moment.

Materials are simple – pencil, eraser, black construction paper, white copy paper, a small ruler, scissors, and a marker or crayon or two. (materials list provided in advance).

The class begins on a Thursday night before the first day with a 90-minute slide talk that sets the stage, and required for all participants.

Followed by Friday, day 1, 4 hours and then Saturday and Sunday, days 2 and 3, 3 hours each day. On each of the working days we tend to run a bit over, so please leave time on the other end of the class each day.

Other combinations of time are available depending on need.

Also included with the class is a 30-minute individual conference with Stuart Shils after the class is over, at a time of your choosing, to explore any aspect of your work or your work life that you’d like to discuss. Could be by zoom, phone or whatever works for you.

some comments on zoom teaching:

I began teaching on zoom in 2020 early summer, with enormous hesitation and reluctance about what might be possible, considering the obvious downsides and deficiencies of this mediated platform. Before that, for 20 years I’d been doing classes in live time, and I knew from the beginning of quarantine that there is no way to replicate in zoom what happens when live. However, after the first zoom class in June 2020, I was converted to the possibility of using it for something other than what it is not. And I came to recognize that with 12 people on zoom in guided working/conversational format, we can explore huge possibility and shape a very rich experience if we can proceed without the expectations from the past to hamper the promise of possibility now. A very wise person said, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘it’s what’s in your way that causes you to find another way’ and that is really where we want to be.