Heather Hansen, a contemporary performance artist, and professional dancer in New Orleans, has come up with an elegant and creative way to capture her dance moves on paper – she gets up-close and personal with a big piece of paper and some charcoal.
For the performance aspect of her unique art, Hansen invites observers to watch her dance on a huge piece of paper. As she dances and prostrates herself on the piece of paper, she marks it with charcoal, gradually building a beautiful diagram of her seemingly ritual dance poses. She has also created a video called “Emptied Gestures” that features studio recordings of her graceful and dramatic installation artworks for those that cannot see it live.
Hansen says of her charcoal drawings; Emptying Gestures is an experiment in kinetic drawing. In this series, I am searching for ways to download my movement directly onto paper, emptying gestures from one form to another and creating something new in the process”
Hansen is a very prolific artist. In addition to numerous gallery performances and exhibitions of her dance charcoal paintings, she also spent all of 2013 creating an artistic sketch a day and plans to do so in 2014 as well. By the way – forcing yourself to create one piece of beautiful artwork a day is a great way for people to stay creatively occupied and motivated!
