The Body in Motion: Project II

Body movement is essential to our biological, physiological, and psychological experience of space. A movement can be as small as an eye twitch or as dramatic as a curtsy. It’s our movement, both internal and external, that contributes to our sense of space, place, and biology.

For this project, you will isolate a body movement.

1. Identify the body movement. Some examples are: walking on a balance beam, blood cells through the body, muscle contraction, hiccups, blinking, talking, etc…
2. In your sketchbook write a list of at least 20 associative words relating to your movement. They can be adjectives describing the physical motion, the context in which the movement is made, etc.

Questions to answer about your isolated body movement:

How does the movement feel?
Is it a movement you have control over? Or is it automatic? Are you aware that it is even occurring?
When, where, why, how do you make the movement?
What purpose does it serve?
Does it involve other bodily movements?

After looking over your associative words and the answers to the questions above, consider how this movement can take a 3D physical form in clay. How could the your capture the pulsing of a migraine headache in clay? into a texture? Into color?
Is there a repeating shape that is produced by the movement?
(Example; a pitcher pitching a baseball….what track does the pitcher’s arm follow? Could that be translated into a physical form?)

Make 10 sketches in your notebook of the possible forms that convey your chosen body movement that does not use the image of the body.


After you have identified your body movement and completed your sketches, using hand building create your movement in clay without using the image of the body.