Sabine Kussmaul

I am a visual artist with a background in fashion design and illustration, based in the vicinity of Macclesfield, UK. I locate my current arts practice within the field of expanded drawing. It has developed as a response to observing, drawing and imagining the relationship between the human body and garments from my background in fashion design, and from many years of teaching drawing as an essential skill for professionals in the creative industries and for anybody interested in a creative engagement with the world. 

After developing a unique method for making hand-stitched pictures by ‘drawing’ with yarn on transparent fabric, I came to question the limitations of drawing as a surface-based undertaking.  The kinetic dimensions of drawing actions  – moving the hand with a tool over a surface – remind me of human movement in landscape, for example running or walking in outdoor environments. 
I now understand the processes of drawing as a template for human engagement with the world where we leave marks on surfaces or re-constitute three-dimensional material contexts. Such practical making occurs in the context of ‘practices’, where we hold intentions and perform techniques. Our practices of making and doing things can also be seen as our ‘inscriptions’ into the world and its environments; drawing and installation are part of such human practices.  

As part of my doctoral enquiry at the University of Chester I developed a new way of outdoor artmaking in response to the environment of the British Peak District. I use paper, elements of wood, fabric and string to produce a mobile working kit (MWK) to make temporary installations outdoors and drawings. I exhibit the artefacts from outdoors as displays in indoor exhibitions, complemented by photographs and videos from the outdoor scenarios. 
The practicalities of such artmaking have allowed me to reveal and critically engage with the relationship between the self and outdoor environments. Using the MWK outdoors and in indoor exhibitions visualises the deep connectivity between the human condition and the outdoor world and articulates the interdependence between artist intentions, choices of artmaking materials and environmental specificities. The MWK has developed in response to the weather, particularly wind and rain, and the topography of Bakestonedale Moor. The MWK is ‘artful equipment’ that articulates tacit knowledge, a practical and cognitive response to dealing with the challenges of being outdoors. 
I understand my arts practice and its many artmaking actions as performances that occur alongside the activity of the other-than-humans in the environment. In this sense, artmaking is a form of non-verbal communication with ‘the other’. 

My engagement with materials, environments and artmaking processes has made me conceive of movement as a manifestation of aliveness and expressivity in the world. This is articulated in the kinetic and rhythmic aspects of material transformations when use materials, but also when humans and animals move in their environments; movement also facilitates the production of sound.

Whilst having developed my arts practice as a solo activity I have also used the MWK in the context of group activities where several persons use it as a choreographic tool in a shared sculptural activity. I developed this practical concept together with Gemma Collard-Stokes Scott Thurston. We have offered workshops where groups used the MWK to move in and around outdoor environment, taking into consideration the particular qualities of the land and using the social interaction between the participants as the driver for such engagement. 

I currently teach drawing in further education and aim to develop my arts practice further by using the MWK as a device for participatory activities that foster wellbeing and environmental awareness for individuals and groups.

I intend to continue the development and exhibition of my work and participate in the current debate about the role of visual arts, particularly of drawing,  in the context of performance and the outdoor environment.
 

I grew up in a rural area in the northern part of the Black Forest in Germany and moved to England in 1998. When I can feel a connection to the outdoors, its natural rhythms and changes (and I don’t mind the wind and rain…), I can find my place in the world, no matter where I am. I am fascinated by the abstract patterns that lie behind the world’s changes and for a while I thought I should study Maths to use its language to capture and describe how water flows in the oceans or the planets move in the sky. Then I decided that Maths was too clear and precise. Instead, engaging with art seemed the real challenge: there is emotion in it, the ephemerality of the felt moment and our hopes and dreams, all articulated in artworks and our processes of making it. I studied fashion because I found that the human figure, her movements and shapes reveal many aspects of our human condition. When you design garments, aside from the utilitarian aspect of the resulting clothes, the design process allows you to tap into the dynamics between touching and using materials and experiencing our body as a place that feels and moves. When I make drawings of the human figure I can imagine or re-live the ways in which we feel garments on our bodies and how we experience the space created between the garment’s architectural form and our skin’s surface.  Drawing is more than a process to produce an image. Making marks allows me to connect what I see, feel and think to my movements with the pencil and to the emerging mark on paper. Making a drawing means to be going on a journey and producing the documentation of its unfolding.  We might understand our walking in landscape as a journey that produces marks –  inscribing and transforming current experience into memory and leaving behind footprints. The work on my PhD project involved that I develop an arts practice with drawing and installation in response to the landscape of Bakestonedale Moor, an area in the vicinity of Pott Shrigley, in the British Peak District. I found out how I could use paper and fabric as drawing supports and as elements for sculptural purposes. My ways of using these materials were a direct response to the wind, rain and topography of Bakestonedale Moor. How we choose and use materials and our temporal rhythms of working with them are part of the practices we have with making, doing, feeling and thinking things. I understand practices as our lasting  ‘inscriptions’ into the world. We ‘perform’ our practices and they occur alongside the activities of all human and other-than-human actors.   When change happens in the world, it manifests in the movement of things – materials reconstitute themselves in new natural forms, people build houses or dance, animals migrate and the string of an instrument rings out because it has been brought into movement. I like to feel myself move along with things. When I play the bass guitar then I can transfer my own physical energy into rhythm and melody. Movement is a manifestation of matter. 

Aside from my arts practice I enjoy windsurfing and running outdoors and I am part of an indie-rock band called Imperial Bees.