Visual Journal
Home Garden – growing visual journal
Seasons 2020 – 2023
As an artist/grower exploring the ways in which art and growing have the potential to overlap and serve as safe spaces for nurturing and collective care.
Healing and Hoping
Lefika La Phodiso
Community Arts Counselling: A reflection
(This reflection is published in the Lefika La Phodiso’s Celebrating 30 Years of Community Art Counselling publication.)
“ I am a visual artist and I work in the creative sector. Innovation, art and creativity are fully integrated into my daily practices, and are tools I use to make sense of the world around me. I have always wanted to learn how to share this with others, and how to share the power of art to transform and heal. With the Community Arts Counselling course, I was confident I would learn these skills, and be able to apply them to the work I do. What I was not expecting was a profound transformation of myself, and personal growth that has made me a happier and healthier person. In reflection, learning to embrace the uncomfortable imperfect through guided creative problem solving methodologies has changed my life. The dynamic of the group component is vital to collaborating, growing and learning, and collective vulnerability is a powerful force for change, at a community and personal level. The safe spaces held by our facilitators allowed for creativity without fear and powerful storytelling processes to emerge.
I leave the online component of this course more resilient, confident and equipped to face life on life’s terms, identify my choices, pathways and destinations that make me happy, grounding myself in the now and giving myself the space to always learn and grow. I have always believed that the role of the imagination and creativity is a super power, now I believe it’s a medicine. A tonic for collective wellbeing.
I trust that over time, with more experience and collaboration, my learnings will enable me to practice with more compassion, empathy and confidence in the face of trauma and discomfort that is almost always present in all the work we do.’’
Pauline Borton
I encourage anyone who wants to learn how creativity can enable and heal to attend this course: https://training.lefikalaphodiso.co.za
This section shares a few macro – snapshots from my experiences of the Community Arts Counselling modules and its profound impact on my life. A few pages from a visual journal expressing healing and hope.
Archival: The Role of the Visual Journal
As part of my ongoing practice, I continue to archive these journals and make new ones to generate new narratives which I will combine in future. I am still fascinated by the role of the imagination in defining feelings about space, place and this informs my daily practice as a creative person, visual journalist, researcher, and archiver. It strongly influences my lifestyle and all that I learn about.
Archival: The Role of the Imagination
Collecting Textures
I collect textures. There’s no better way to capture a moment than through its texture.
A texture swatch is a creative moment frozen in time, encapsulated in an image. Influencing myriad artworks and processes.
Dream Home
My key interests lie in concepts that deal with the construction of social space. These concepts include the role of space in defining and affirming sense of belonging and identity. Core to my decision to work with these concepts is my return to South Africa after choosing to live in London for eight years. I returned to South Africa to sell my childhood home and had to deal with the loss and displacement that arose from this experience. I have used my imagination to interrogate the value I place on cherished possessions, and how I use these objects to anchor myself in space and create home. I explore ‘representational space’ as a place given meaning by the value humans place on it according to the symbols and codes that exist there. I use the gallery space to map out groups of personal possessions. These groups of objects are based on my past childhood home and present home. These objects serve to represent memories and how this adds personal value to the interior of my architectural environments. Artists who influenced my work methodology include Penny Siopis and Do Hu Su. My research included philosophers on space and architecture namely Henri Lefebvre (1974) and Robert Hughes (2009); both were useful in understanding the role of imagination and architecture in defining space.
Trace Memories of JAG
Places are filled with secret histories – ‘’accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories in reverse’’ (de Certeau 1984:108) and “The memorable is that which can be dreamed about a place” (de Certeau 1984:109).
These quotes formed the foundation for my creative practice throughout the making of “Trace Memories of JAG’’. I sought to develop my own understanding of Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) as a ‘safe’ space for me within the greater city. I also deal with ideas of changing the reality of a space such as the JAG institution by putting one space into another – JAG within UNISA Art Gallery. I am enthralled with JAG as one of the few iconic buildings still standing in Johannesburg used for its original purpose. My visual analysis of the JAG space started in childhood and transformed throughout my adult experience as an artist.
My artwork interprets personal feelings the building evokes based on the study of phenomenology which focuses on the subconscious and sensory reactions people have to space (Pallasmaa 1986:22-25).
I am inviting the viewer into my own secret view of the space. This is a visual journey about place-making after returning to South Africa. JAG will be the artwork, a tool with which I can draw and map, by using the traces of time, light and shadows to interpret feelings the JAG space evokes.
Observing Time
I moved across time zones, travelled through the African sky, and sat in multiple airports, the irony of this experience is expressed in the landscapes I created while waiting, entering my mind and drawing imaginary forests, homes and pathways – home. A place for roots, not flight.
PAULINE BORTON 