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Early Saturday morning April 10, Christine, Neil and Joan made their way to the University of Buffalo for a Jazz Writing workshop with Steven Skaggs and Eliza Schulte. "What in the world is Jazz Writing?" you ask. Good question, and one each of us pondered until we received correspondence from the instructors themselves. Steven Skaggs says "Jazz Writing, in its fullest sense, is completely spontaneous painting of language. You confront a sheet of paper and simply begin to make art". The methods are improvisational, intuitive and spontaneous.
We began the morning with some exercises, making gestural figures – letter-like marks with brush or charcoal. When we worked with words or sentences in our own handwriting – done quickly, building up and layering parts of the phrase, some done lightly, some intensely. From there we moved on to alternative ways of putting words on a page, stacking, stretching, layering and random spacing and positioning.
The later part of the afternoon was spent confronting a sheet of blank paper and plunging in. Working very wet, we allowed the writing fluid to mingle with the water and begin to take on shape and design. Responding to the look of the page, we put down interpretive marks and gestures, using various tools, going back over what was previously written with new words and new tools, and gradually the piece began to evolve.
Helpful critiques were given, both personally and in a group setting with suggestions for resolving some of the design problems and relieving the feeling of panic encountered by many over different portions of the assignment. We went home weary, but challenged to discover new ideas and be open to the gentle prodding to step outside of our comfortable way of putting pen to paper.
Sunday morning, the 11th most of us were refreshed with a good nights sleep and once more able to accept the challenges of new ideas and new ways of doing a very traditional craft and art form. We began by displaying some of our work from Saturday on the wall. Steven and Eliza also had some of their work to demonstrate and explain their way of doing the Jazz Writing. Then our work was critiqued and we were given an opportunity to comment if we so wished.
The first exercise of the morning was to write about the weekend in a small rectangle about 2 ˝" by 4" in our own hand writing, filling the rectangle. We then wrote a response to that and in so doing we were to design a composition on the page with these two elements. Some found the exercise easy and came up with rather interesting designs, others had to concentrate on the writing to such an extent that the overall design was very simplistic.
We were given a page with words written here and there all over the sheet. They were words that were randomly taken from a paragraph. Other words were added to this as we thought of them. Then we were to compose a sentence or quote or statement from the words we had. It could make sense if we wanted it to, but that was not necessary, our purpose was to compose something ourselves. We took the quote or sentence that we composed, and using the techniques we learned the day before we made a painting with it. It was to be improvisational, intuitive and spontaneous, rather than planned out before hand. We were "Jazz Writing".
After lunch we critiqued our work from the morning session, trying to discover what worked and what did not in our designs. Following this we wrote about our families, in our own handwriting, completely covering the paper to give an overall pattern in writing from top to bottom and side to side (no borders). The composition was then completed by layering graphics, lettering or whatever on top of this pattern of writing. Finally these were critiqued with Steve and Eliza making comments on the pieces, but encouraging us to speak about them, saying what we liked and didn’t and what problems we had and how we tried to solve them. This gave us a taste of criticizing our own work, which is probably the best way to improve our skills and discover what is possible with our art.
On several occasions Steven Skaggs told us that Jazz Writing is a means of experimenting with design, and of discovering what can be done, if we are willing to leave our tried and true way of doing things. He said "No one is going to buy this stuff, so do it just for your own pleasure, and for what you can learn from it".
It was a challenging weekend, especially for those of us who are very structured and feel uncomfortable with the uncertainty of improvisation and spontaneity.
Joan Gooderham
Neil Reichelt