| This study is a description of artists' experiences as they come to their work of making. Nine artist/sculptors were interviewed on their experience of touch. The study explores, through the lens of Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue, his "I-You" word pair, the nature of the relationship between artist and materials, between the "I" and the "You," and how touch brings individuals into contact and life-changing relationship. The study is based on Clark Moustakas's methodology outlined in Heuristic Research (1990). It also includes elements of participatory hermeneutic investigation.;Why is it important to do this kind of research? As Pablo Freire and Augusto Boal discovered in their work, the disenfranchised in any society are the people to listen to if the society is to address their needs. This study starts on the premise that Western culture's subordination of the body and touch as a way of knowing has unentitled a mode of experience that might be a fruitful avenue for addressing challenges associated with our way of life, such as adaptation, relationship formation, and creation of meaning. This study looks to touch-oriented people in a culture that tends to avoid touch, and asks about their experiences in the context of a logo-centric culture, asking if touch practices help them to adapt, offer a way into new relationship, new flexibility, new connection, and how touch intensifies the power of liminal space to hold and transform.;Sculptors, the study found, sometimes find themselves in a borderland on the outside, a kind of liminal space, and usually do not experience this as unfortunate. In this in-between, the place of their relationship with their work, the sculptors experience an upwelling and expression of the unconscious as well as a manifestation of their conscious.;Participants shared memories of moments of tenderness brought on by touch, skin to thread, clay, stone. These are luscious moments glittering in the dark, which light, warm, and soften the new landscape of those who have fallen through the cracks of a logo-centric culture and have lived to enjoy a new touch-rich life. |
