Proprioceptiveness, and Being Creatively with the Animal as Animal

The animal and being animal is a proposition and position that invites observational and critical debate. To observe the non-human animal is too often tense and politicised; to take on an understated what-it-is-to-be-animal is a sensitised and sensitive means to understand differing perspectives. Using diverse methods, processes and materials, and curious to a myriad of opening potentialities, they explore working as humans from an animal-centric perspective. They bring sensitivities to their handling of the animal as both artistic subject and collaborator, of behaving as animal, in order to observe and engage with empathy and openness to the unexpected, to animal insight and revelation. Iterative long-term projects in drawing and printmaking foreground proximity and proprioceptive, nearly devotional studio and caretaking practices centering on respiration and companionate movement before, within, and beyond, a global pandemic.

This paper explores the socialised and familiar in close observation, directly and indirectly, in their individual yet companion practices discussing roles and responsibilities. It reflects on the allowing and embracing of other species within their artworks, and of being mindful and sensible with balancing sympathies and empathies as the humans within an often unbalanced system of agency. Specifically, it centres on our mindfully responsive exhibition at Tippetts and Eccles Galleries at Utah State University in 2021, where we invited a canine collaborator into our thinking through praxis and the interventions and residual outcomes this created.

9-11 March 2023, Eastern Kentucky University.