Musical Table is an improvisation game: kinesthetic, auditory, visual activity that engages all of us in playful collaboration utilizing the languages that we all understand: drawing, music and sometimes food. It is a huge drawing and a community made community portrait. We draw each other’s faces from across the table to the stop and go rhythm of music. Similarly to the Musical Chair game, we shift positions on the table when the music stops, face a new person and start a new drawing. We draw our faces on top of others faces, familiar faces, merging, alike, unique, distinct and yet all the same and together one big huge self portrait. In this one, quite literally, even if for a moment, we are all getting on the same page and no one is ever left out.
The project is ongoing. It started as a break the ice, loosening exercise during my first years teaching in 1995 while working with high school students in the Saturday Program at the Cooper Union. I’ve led this activity throughout the years in all of my classes in college and expanded it into my own home as a house warming activity and then shortly after into the community in 2011 to bring people together and to include those who usually feel left out. Currently I am doing a series of these drawings with the autism community.
Follow the project live on Instagram through videos, images, time-lapses of the emerging drawings and reflections on this process via the hatchtag #FacesOnTopOfFacesSeries of #MyParticipatoryProjects
Also see:
Impromptu Drawing of [US] : We Are *Almost All Immigrants
2022 Center for Connection and Collaboration, Asheville, NC Musical Table as part of the center’s first open day
2022 Art On The Island, Marshall, NC Musical Table as part of the Madison County Arts Council 10th year art celebration, Community Self Portrait
2022 Black Mountain Museum [RE]Happening performance of Musical Table, Faces On Top Of Faces Series at the yearly event at the college’s grounds in Black Mountain, NC
2019 on display in Downtown Marshall at 74 S. Main Street.
2019 presented at the Creative Sector Summit : Art in Full Color on May 17 at the Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. Southside Center. Asheville, N.C.
2019 awarded the Arts Build Community Grant – Creating Art Together from The Asheville Area Arts Council and community donors Pete, Cindy & Lisa Perez, and Richard & Bridget Eckerd to facilitate a series of collaborative drawings at Arms Around ASD to serve the autism community with art play, connection and exchange.
2017 performed and displayed at the Asheville Arts Council, Thom Robinson and Ray Griffin Exhibition Space at the Refinery Creator Space. Asheville, N.C.
2017 created, performed and displayed at The Block OFF Biltmore, Asheville. N.C.
2017 on exhibit at Weizenblatt Gallery at Mars Hill University, Mars Hill, N.C.
2012 exhibited at Upstairs [Artspace] – Tryon, as part of group exhibit on “social malaise, political issues, philosophical angst and pop trends with a humorous edge.”
2012 exhibited as part of Our Stories, Our Voices traveling group show on immigration at Enka High School – Media Gallery, University of North Carolina, Asheville – Highsmith Union Gallery, and Artery – Asheville Arts Council.
2011 featured in Verve Magazine, the Mountain Xpress, and the Asheville Citizen Times in North Carolina