Just This: zen approaches to drawing, poetry & music

10am – 1.15pm: Workshops and Discussion

Booking Required

The morning will begin with some introductions to the contributors work and a discussion. There will then be 3 simultaneous workshops in drawing, music improvisation and poetry, followed by further whole group discussion to share learning from the workshops.

FREE – Booking is required for each workshop, they happen at the same time so it will only be possible to attend one.

• About Catherine’s Drawing Installation and workshop: Based on ‘The Newbridge Cherry’ (sadly cut down in October this year) ‘Come see the cherry trees of a water constellation’ explores the impermanence and porosity of trees, climate, and water by following Zen-structured approaches marking fragments and symbols in transitory graphite and coloured chalk across the floor and walls of the exhibition space using drawing as a form of environmental contemplation.
• EVERYONE is invited (no drawing experience needed!) to contribute to the cherry tree drawing installation during the workshop. We’ll work with plant materials, graphite, and chalk to learn about, share, explore and interpret Zen-structured drawing approaches as a way of discovering new creative possibilities; perhaps fresh environmental awareness; and some drawing ‘contemplation’ practices that can be taken into our everyday lives.
  https://www.instagram.com/catherinemdee/
• Zen and Poetry Workshop with Alex Reed
: We will explore connections between Zen practice and the activities of writing and reading poetry. Space will be (co)created to look at what arises in our writing when we try to put aside intentionality, quieten the judgemental mind, and ‘get our (smaller) selves out of the way’.While Zen points towards reality beyond language and the thinking mind, poetry is a language-based art-form. Despite this apparent contradiction, because of the imaginative ways that language is arranged, played with, and often compressed in poetry, it can express aspects of life that are otherwise difficult to convey in words.
• Exploring Zen Art Principles and Musical Improvisation Workshop with Martin Donkin and John Garner of Shunyata Improvisation Group: 
Martin and John will explain the approach of the Shunyata Improvisation Group and inspirations the group has drawn from Zen Buddhism. The Workshop will focus in particular upon three Zen aesthetic principles; Silence, Simplicity and Subtlety. We will work with the workshop group to listen, improvise and be attentive to interventions, the contributions of others and the ambient sounds of the room.We hope to provide to both first time and experienced improvisers an opportunity to consider the impacts of Spaciousness, Restraint, Flow and Emptiness when included within Improvisation.

2pm – 4pm: Performance by Shunyata Improvisation Workshop, Alex Reed and Catherine Dee

FREE – Booking Required

The Shunyata Improvisation Group

The Shunyata Improvisation Group playing violin, cello, guitar, percussion and voice, create an extraordinary style of music; intimate, distinct, quiet, acoustic, entirely composed in the moment. Each of our concerts provides an immersive meditative experience. Inspired by Zen approaches to art, emphasising spaciousness, the group explores both textural and melodic forms of improvisation.

The group have released three albums, featured on the seminal Tusk Editions compilation album series, performed in music venues, sacred spaces, art galleries and at the Newcastle Late Shows 2022, Tusk and Durham Jazz festivals. The group have been broadcasted on Radio 3, Tusk TV and Panic Radio France.
https://shunyataimprovisationgroup.weebly.com/

Catherine Dee

Catherine Dee’s drawing and wider art practice broadly concerns ‘Life among trees’ in relation to contemporary landscape architecture, forests, climate, ecology and social justice. Catherine works with drawing experimentally for exhibition and as a means to illustrate and evolve landscape architectural concepts published in book form.
Catherine’s work has been strongly influenced by (‘traditional’) Japanese aesthetics/practices and their influence in contemporary art theory. Catherine’s Buddhist practice is in the Soto Zen tradition and influences every aspect of her practice but not (yet) overtly.

https://catherinedee.co.uk/About

Key exhibitions, installations and workshops include: Swedish Agricultural University SLU (2008) Installations, University of California Berkeley CEED Gallery, Grove Drawing Installations (2014), Kyoto School of Art, Japan, Drawing Workshop (2016), and Arts Council funded Making Ways: ‘Parliament of Trees’ Installation Exhibition at Yorkshire Arts Space Persistence Works, Sheffield (2018). ‘Oxeltid’ Drawing installations at Konstkiosk#4, Trelleborg, Sweden (2021)

Alex Reed

Alex Reed’s poetry has been published in various print and on-line magazines. His pamphlets A Career in Accompaniment and These Nights at Home (with accompanying images by Keren Banning) were published by V. Press and explore themes of illness, care-giving and loss.

His recent collection knots, tangles, fankles (V.Press, 2022) is a re-imagining of the work of radical psychiatrists R.D. Laing & A. Esterson on family life and ‘schizophrenia’. His Buddhist practice is in the Soto Zen tradition