A loop can be repeated. A crowded patch can get loud. An empty part of the paper can be left quiet. Someone else will hear the same drawing differently. The marks give us something to work with, and the decisions belong to the people playing.

Children, parents, musicians and first-time players can move between drawing, composing, performing and listening. A person can change the music without having to learn an approved vocabulary first.

Being a parent means making a plan and listening to what happens to it. My diaper chops have, at times, been heavier than my musical ones. That is in the work too: attention, interruption, patience and somebody changing the whole situation while you are still explaining it.

At Watermill, the children’s drawings were considered alongside Rhoda Kellogg’s collection. A mark can be looked at, played, answered, added to. Nicole and I work with the materials and the people in the room; their choices determine what the workshop becomes.

The Watermill Center — photographs and workshop

The 2022–23 Social Practice CUNY fellowship connects this work with the archive and with teaching. In The Image Is a Seed: Student Addition, other people take up the source material and make something from their own position.

At Catskill Art Space, the marks accumulate through the sessions. A drawing made in one encounter can become something for somebody else to play. The score shown here comes out of that work.

Catskill Art Space — the four workshop score archives

Parents in the Avant Garde performed at The Stone on April 20, 2024. The wider April residency included other ensembles and projects; this page follows the Scribble Scores strand.