Richard Waring:
"Richard Serra famously said, "Drawing is a verb." In Verblist, he compiled a series of what he called "actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process." Serra has talked at length about the central place this language-based drawing occupies in the development of his early sculptural practice:
“When I first started, what was very, very important to me was dealing with the nature of process,” he said. “So what I had done is I’d written a verb list: to roll, to fold, to cut, to dangle, to twist…and I really just worked out pieces in relation to the verb list physically in a space.” A sort of linguistic laying out of possible artistic options, this work on paper functioned for the artist “as a way of applying various activities to unspecified materials.”
These works on paper suggests a common ground underlying Serra's practices in all mediums—from early sculptures to later monumental works, which not only twist and curve but also enclose, surround, and encircle. It shows Serra's debt to action painting and his proximity to Conceptual and performance practices; the list was published in the journal Avalanche in 1971 and testifies to the artist’s close relationship to dancers like Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti, with whom he shared not only a milieu but a commitment to carrying out verbs:"
Using graphite to completely cover the paper, I then scrunched it up, unfolded it and then stamped on it. It ripped and tore in the middle. I unfolded it after scrunching it again and made a landscape with it. The folds and scrunches create valleys and hills. By drawing the landscape on paper I was able to take it much more detail of the 'landscape'.
Using Richard Serra's techniques of using a verb list is something I have done before in Foundation. It is a useful tool when working with all types of materials and experimentation because you never know where it will take you. This landscape is interesting, it reminds me of an apocalyptic, barren land. The black shiny texture makes it look as though the land has been burnt to a crisp. The way the light shines on parts of it from being stamped on is effective and gives me inspiration for how I could light the landscapes.
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