SOULMAKING

- An alternate place to know oneself and to look at the depths and meaning of
what we do in our daily lives.
- Is a step towards a deeper comprehension of how the world is perceived and
how his or her own personality is seen.

MAJOR ROLE OF SOULMAKING IN ART-PRODUCTION

- Form of crafting stories

- Transforming brief moments into images
- Symbols that connect with people
- Understanding culture
- Embodying tolerance, peace, and imagination

ARTS EXAMPLES

- Spoliarium
- David Mueller’s
- Variety Culture
- Tree of Life

SOUL MAKING IS AN ACTIVITY OF:

 Knowing oneself better

- “Who are you”
- Topic that throughout the process serves as a guidepost.
- Knowing oneself begins with CONSCIOUSNESS
- It is necessary to realize and embrace one’s truth, history and understanding of
existence.

 Understanding Life’s Depth and Essence

- Religious perspective
- Art is a human expression that is highly valued and symbolic, a person typically
uses different art forms to fulfil the need to communicate and express him or
herself.

 Evaluating what oneself does

- A sense of purpose of what an individual is doing.
- Any artwork is an expression of one’ perception, feelings, motions, and realities,
the key to personal cultural growth is the process of creating such expression.
- Soul making utilizes every human experience to build the influence that can
make the artist himself and others improve.

 Learning in Everyday Life

- A method that can be gone through by anyone.
 - As all are creative in their own right, it is not limited to the “obviously artistic”.

CATEGORIES OF SOULMAKING

 Crafting Images
- Imaging or representing in any form, which may be through painting, sculpting,
drawing, storytelling, poetry, dancing, composing or taking notes.
- It is rooted in our own personal experiences, our personal encounters, and
events that triggered or reflections, recall and judgment.

 Crafting Stories
- The moment we write, engrave and inscribe our own thoughts, ideas,
commentaries, criticisms, and positive and negative emotions, we are crafting
stories.
- It becomes our own history that can be handed down to our children and family
for the succeeding generations.

 Crafting Instruments
- An instruments maker is a bridge toward the unknown because the instrument
produces sounds that transcend our feelings, emotions, and sensation in another
realm.
- The soul is accompanied by a vessel so that the sol will not vanish.
- Transforming any found or used object into a musical instrument allow one to
discover harmony
and balance to produce a sound that is entertaining, enhancing, and magical.

 Crafting Movements
- Life is full of movements, filled with various beats.
- Life is full of flowing images accompanied by flowing narratives.
- Everything we do in life is a performance, we perform life.

 Crafting Techniques
- Anything can be crafted by using different evocative descriptions of experience
and explorations, like photograph studies, puppets, and masks, constructions
and notepad studies.

5 PHASES OF SOUL MAKING

 Seeking
- point of self-recognition and knowing that each of us is a seeker

 Settling
- communicating with the soul, with other human and nonhuman beings (and this
means that future of humans and nonhuman) and with the world

 Surrender
 - takes us up and throws us down; calls for the wounds we bear to be accepted;
forces us to spend time living in the darkness

 Soul Making
- where we start growing up with some wisdom looking for the welfare of others

 Soaring
- conquering our worldly experiences of the material realities to travel, which does
not happen if we only want to fly

SOUL MAKING: MAKING AND DERIVING MEANING FROM ART

In order for humans to make sense of language and derive meanings from words,
semantics and grammatical rules are important elements to be considered. Context
and symbolisms are also considered to interpret and analyze either verbal or written
works. When it comes to art, in order to make sense of the artwork, it would require
understanding the visual elements where art was grounded on, especially the
principles of design.

The audience of the artwork must have a certain level of awareness to the style,
form, and content:

Style
- Refers to distinctive handling of elements and media associated with the work of
an individual artist, a school, a movement, or a specific culture or time period.

Form
- It is what the audience sees, a finished product put harmoniously (or not)
according to different principles of design.
- The totality of the artwork, which includes the textures, colors, and shapes
utilized by the artist.

Content
- Includes not only its form but also its subject matter and underlying meanings or
themes.

IMPROVISATION

- It can be defined as doing something without prior preparation in originative way.

- It has become an integral part of the arts in the present context.
- The unexpectedness off the changes brought about improvisation makes the
artwork to have a distinctive quality that creates its individuality and identity.

When an artist makes his work, he has already an idea of the elements that will be
included in his work. As he begins to craft his work, he may have deviated from his
original plan. So, in essence, improvisation is evident in the process of making the
painting.

APPROPRIATION
- Refers to borrowing to create a new artwork
- To appropriate does not mean stealing or plagiarizing
 - It is different from Forgery
• Two Forms of Forgery
 Outright copies of existing works and pastiches
 Making an artist interpretation might do by prediction in
contemporary times

7 DA VINCIAN PRINCIPLES

 Curiosita
- An insatiably curious approach to life and unrelenting quest for continuous
learning.

 Dimostrazione
- A commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence, and
willingness to learn from mistakes.

 Sensazione (Refinement of the Five Senses and Mindfulness)

- The continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven
experience and to stay present in the moment.

 Sfumato
- The technique of allowing tones and colors to shade gradually into one another,
producing softened outlines or hazy forms.

 Arte/Scienza
- Developing a balance between logic and imagination. Other terms for this are
balancing between art and science as well as whole brain thinking.
• Right Brained:
 I like details
 I am almost always on time
 I rely on logic
 I am skilled at math
 I am organized and disciplined
 I like lists

• Left Brained:
 I am highly imaginative
 I am good at brainstorming
 I love to doodle
 I often say or do the unexpected
 I rely on intuition
 I often lose track of time

 Corporalitá
 - An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous
learning.

 Connessione
- A recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and
phenomena. Systems thinking