Aquatint from “Raven Girl”, by Audrey Niffenegger – via guardian.co.uk
Fascinating article over on The Guardian by Audrey Niffenegger, describing her working journey through prints and fairytales to a new dance for the Royal Ballet. In partnerships with choreographer Wayne McGregor, Niffenegger created a new fairytale – the dark story of the chimeraic Raven Girl – illustrated with a long series of aquatints.
The article describes the curious process of mixing together storytelling, printmaking and dance – a fascinating insight into the creative alchemy of collaborative working. Niffenegger is a superb novelist (The Time Traveller’s Wife), an inventive graphic novelist (The Night Bookmobile), and an accomplished print-maker, illustrator and painter. Her output is an object lesson in the unbounded nature of creativity – and of the “Renaissance” ideal of artist as unfettered by any particular medium.
All of us in the Inside Out group know each other primarily as visual artists – but am I right in suspecting that many of us should just as well be known as musicians, dancers, novelists, playwrights, singers or poets?
In another life I would be a dancer!!
Diana
Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 08:34:34 +0000 To: dianabaur@hotmail.com
Now that’s an interesting idea: write a biographical short story or draw a self-portrait of you-from-an-alternate-universe where you became a completely different kind of artist!
By coincident I visited with Jo over the weekend Jo’s friend from when she was a child onwards now living in Fowey Cornwell. She was working on the final touches of the costume for the lead dancer in this Ballet !!! That work is sensational, so is the whole story around Audrey Niffenegger, (apart from the film about her book !) Glad you send the articles, thanks, Wilf
A friend of a friend of a friend connection with Audrey Niffenegger! Fantastic!