Look, Look, See Field Guide

CPSI ReVision Spark Session

2020 Donna Milani Luther and Walt Stevenson, facilitators

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Materials:

DON’T WORRY – BRING WHAT YOU CAN Field Guide One large piece of poster board, box, basket, space for collection Paper 8.5 x 11 Art supplies from around your house –markers, paints, brushes, ribbon, wire hangers, - whatever you have – no worries! Large plastic bag Sharpie Magazines to cut up Scissors Donna and Walt’s Suggested rules:

• Dive in • Judge later • Keep collecting • Don’t assign meaning – yet!

Group Norms

Lead with Love * Low Ego * High Impact * Move at the speed of trust

(Alicia Garza, Patrice Cullirs, Opal Tometti – Black Lives Matter)

Essential Questions for the day

An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site.

Frank Lloyd Wright

How does art and design relate to my life and my facilitation? How might we bring design, creativity and originality to our own work?

What are some of your facilitation challenges?

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Sketch number 1 LOOK at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. Find something that catches your eye and SKETCH it by breaking down and replicating the geometric shapes.

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Sketch number 2 LOOK at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Administrative building. Find something that catches your eye, and SKETCH it by breaking down and replicating the geometric shapes.

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Sketch number 3 LOOK at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House. Find something that catches your eye, and SKETCH it by breaking down and replicating the geometric shapes.

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SEE: Form & Function REVIEW YOUR SKETCHES List the geometric shapes you found in these spaces or object and write down your assumptions about their purpose. Why were those particular shapes chosen by the architect? Through simple observation, what

assumptions can you make about the function of the building as a whole? Feeling Describe in words—or in pictures and words—the architectural details of this space or object (i.e., color, texture, materials, symmetry, scale, ornamentation) and what feelings they evoke about the structure.

Reflections Review the objects and shapes that caught your eye? Are there similarities? Differences? Do you notice a pattern? What else does it look like? What else does it remind me of?

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Collect

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. Frank Lloyd Wright

Exercises: • Collect items that intrigue you. Don’t think about the reason(s) – just collect. • Look for things to collect everywhere: start collecting leaves, flowers, color swatches, pictures

from magazines, every day objects, quotations, words, fonts, patterns, interesting garbage, etc.

• Document part of a building that most people ignore – collect your impressions. • Collect multiples of things: leaves, stones, shells, seeds. Lay them out in front of you – notice

the differences. − Paste them into your field book − Start a collection of 3-D items − Arrange and rearrange in a defined space (which you define, of course).

Collect

Reflections: How does this apply to me? How might this apply to my client? How might this apply to my current challenge?

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Compare

Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain.

Frank Lloyd Wright Exercises: • Take two different objects and try to create as many connections between them as possible • Give each object a voice: create a dialog • Look at a magazine in many ways – one way at a time, and write three lines about each point

of view: sociologically, historically, as a parable, as a directory, as a work of art, as a fairy tale.

Compare Reflections: How does this apply to me? How might this apply to my client? How might this apply to my current challenge?

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Notice Patterns

The truth is more important than the facts. Frank Lloyd Wright

Exercises: • Combine group of objects by their visual qualities, or emotional qualities • Pretend you are a microscope. Look at something in nature for five minutes, and draw the

patterns you see • Look at a tree and its shape. Look at the part the leaves play in making the structure you see.

Look for patterns made where the foliage is dense or light.

Notice Patterns

Reflections: How does this apply to me? How might this apply to my client? How might this apply to my current challenge?

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Analyze Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

Frank Lloyd Wright Exercises: • Recreate things in your book that catch your eye. Make them again and again with different

media • Record what you’re drawn to • Transform an everyday experience – add music; wear a costume, pretend you are someone

else • Give your favorite objects a voice. Write down their conversations. • Write a story about your objects – pretend they are magic, or create a fictitious history about

them • Repeat!

Analyze Reflections: How does this apply to me? How might this apply to my client? …to my current challenge?

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Principles of Art and Design

“Whatever good things we build end up building us.” Jim Rohn

Emphasis in a composition refers to developing points of interest to pull the viewer's eye to important parts of the body of the work. Balance is a sense of stability in the body of work. Balance can be achieved by repeating same shapes, and by creating a feeling of equal weight. Harmony is achieved in a body of work by using similar elements throughout the work, harmony gives an uncomplicated look to your work. Variety refers to the differences in the work. You can achieve variety by using difference shapes, textures, colors and values in your work. Movement adds excitement to your work by showing action and directing the viewers’ eye throughout the picture plane. Rhythm is a type of movement in drawing and painting. It is seen in repeating of shapes and colors. Alternating lights and darks also give a sense of rhythm. Proportion or scale refers to the relationships of the size of objects in a body of work. Proportion gives a sense of size seen as a relationship of objects. such as smallness or largeness. Unity is seen in a painting or drawing when all the parts equal a whole. Your work should not appear disjointed or confusing.

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Reflect and Connect ‘Think simple' as my old master used to say – meaning, reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles."

Frank Lloyd Wright Using the Elements and Principles of Art and Design as a starting place, we will ask questions that will lead to the design of a unified session, which has, as an end goal, a unified approach to facilitation. Here are some questions that will lead to design explorations and decisions:

1. Reflect upon your work today. What are you drawn to visually and emotionally? 2. How might you align your facilitation design to what you’re drawn to?

3. Look at group – what reflects their style? 4. What style might nudge them forward? 5. Play with this idea; superimpose unusual questions or design elements to push facilitation

ideas to another level 6. Identify a need, choose a theme that might fit

7. Practice creating ways to make that fit 8. Is there a metaphor that might apply?

9. Take the polar opposite of your theme – create a session based on that metaphor 10. Questions Principles of design: does my session design have emphasis, balance,

movement, proportion and unity?

11. What connections have you made?

12. Did you make any discoveries? 13. What struck you and what stuck with you?

14. Did you learn something new about yourself, your process? 15. How might this apply to your work? A design of a session? A personal choice?

Keep looking, keep connecting!

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This field book was designed with inspiration and exercises from: How to be an Explorer of the world: a portable life Museum, Keri Smith, a Perigee Book, 2008. Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit, Corita Kent and Jan Steward, Bantam Books, 1992. www.The-Private-Eye.com, (5x) Looking / Thinking by analogy Stained Glass Window Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, rendered by Dennis Casey, Dover Publications, 1997.