Dreams & Nightmares

Introduction:
Dreams and nightmares happen during the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep. Dreams can be bright worlds of inspiration or terrifying situations which wake us in the night. Sometimes we don’t even remember our dreams after waking up.

Sometimes bizarre things happen in our dreams. Dreams are mysterious and challenging to understand, but they do reflect our life. “Dreams” can also be used to describe our personal goals, while “Nightmares” can describe our fears. Dreams and/or nightmares can inspire our artwork.


Questions to Ask Yourself:

• How can dreams and nightmares describe our past and present experiences and help us imagine our future?

• How can my dreams inspire my artwork? 

• What are your dreams for the future?  What scares you about the future?

• What do you daydream about?

Project Idea Starters:

• Start a dream journal, when you wake up from a dream, write about it. Make artwork inspired by what you see in your dreams. 

• Create 1 artwork that shows the different emotions of happy dreams and scary nightmares. 

• What do you think your pets dream about? Make an artwork about their dreams.

• Use photography to capture a collection of dream-like images. 

3 Artists Who Work With This Theme: (good artists to research)

Persistence of Memory

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of War)

1. Salvador Dali and the Surrealism Art Movement

• The art movement known as surrealism concentrated on creating art using the imagery of an artist's subconscious.

• "The Persistence of Memory" the melted clocks could symbolize that the past is gone forever, except in our memories. But when we sleep (as suggested by the sleeping walrus-like creature) our mind makes sense of our memories by ordering them and converting some into symbols. 

• "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of War)," by Dali incorporates his fears of the Spanish Civil War...like his nightmare.

2. Sandy Skoglund

 



Revenge of the Goldfish

• Her work serves as a symbol for people’s subconscious fears. In her work she photographs a three dimensional set to portray her feelings. Through her technique, Skoglund creates installations that turn our reality upside down. This causes us to question what’s real and what’s not. At first glance Sandy’s photos seem like extreme, amusing images but a deeper look reveals an underlying threat. This threat plays into people’s fears. 

• In "Revenge of the Goldfish", we all know goldfish to anything but dangerous animals, but the title transforms what is already a mysterious scenario into something vaguely threatening.

• Click here to see a short video about Sandy Skoglund.

3. Aboriginal Dreamtime

Women's Dreamings of the Tanami Desert 2

• In Aboriginal (native Australian) cultures, Tjukurrpa (or "the Dreaming") is a diverse collection of beliefs and stories about their ancestors who they believed created & shaped the world. They use the term "Dreaming" to describe this ritual.

• "Women's Dreamings of the Tanami Desert 2" by Margaret Anjulli is a contemporary (modern) take on Aborigine artwork. Click here to read more about the culture & this artwork.

Sources: Handheld art, ducksters.com, 
http://www.learner.org/courses/globalart/work/242/index.html, 
http://www.personally-selected-aboriginal-art.com/aboriginal-dreamtime.html.