Overview
Joanna is the current Level 4 Subject Leader and encourages students to play and explore as an integral part of locating their own personal visual language. With a background in commercial illustration for editorial, book jackets and advertising, Joanna turned her practice around after undertaking an MA in Illustration at MMU.
The initial starting point was simply to ‘draw dance’, an idea which evolved through childhood memories of dreaming of being a ballerina. Looking at traditional and contemporary dance, she made connections between drawing, the body and dance and attempted to convey movement and document ‘traces of dance’. Her working method began to transform from being formulaic and tight, as it had been, to more fluid and unpredictable. She began drawing ‘off the page’ and using more tangible and tactile materials. Her perception of ‘what’ drawing was or could be shifted. The discovered that I ‘meaning’ could be created through drawing and creative writing has uncovered a very personal narrative thread throughout.
This culminated in her drawings and poems, being used as a stimulus for Year 10, GCSE dance students at Fallibroome Academy in Macclesfield. The dancers become the drivers to ‘illustrate’ her work, and transformed its’ meaning to become their personal interpretations. Joanna understand from her own experience that in order to learn you have to trust yourself, allow yourself to be vulnerable, ready to collaborate and open to the unexpected.