100 Assignments From Nayland Blake

Editor’s Word: The next textual content has been excerpted with permission and tailored from My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio: Writings and Interviews, 1983–2024 by Nayland Blake, edited by Jarrett Earnest, printed by Duke College Press on November 4, and accessible on-line and in bookstores (Copyright Duke College Press, 2025).

I’ve taught for 30 years in faculties, residencies, and intercourse events. I’ve come to view educating as a necessity, a approach of placing again into the world the tradition and concepts the world has poured into me. The bedrock of educating artwork is the task. And the idea for my very own work as an artist is with the ability to give myself assignments. The precise task on the proper time can reply a necessity we ­haven’t been in a position to articulate to ourselves. The assignments we want inform the story of how we view the work and the world, even when they inform it slant. I give my college students assignments that ­got to me instantly at school in addition to others that I’ve gleaned from the writings of artists and thinkers in vari­ous fields. Discovering a very good task gives a thrill. I give them to ­folks for vari­ous causes — to construct a par­tic­u­lar talent or to maybe lead somebody to a dif­fer­ent sense of how they might have a look at what they do. A few of ­these I’ve honed over years of lessons in vari­ous disciplines; some are for nobody however myself. After I doubt what I do or am unable to get myself to work, the one ­factor that has obtained me out is a self-­administered task. They’ve been my approach for creating myself. Good assignments aren’t simple to give you, however one princi­ple that has helped me comes out of restoration: Take the motion, and let go of the consequence. Many instances folks try to make use of assignments to drive ­folks to come back to a conclusion, to predetermine the end result. Good assignments awaken us to the breadth of prospects accessible to us fairly than slender ­issues down to 1 risk. They’re the scaffolding we construct to the touch the surprising and wild inside ourselves. They’re how we stretch. ­There is no such thing as a proper or mistaken reply. ­There may be solely the subsequent ­factor to do.

Whereas ­these assignments ­is not going to flip somebody ­else into me, they ­will present the practitioner with a path to the deviations inside themselves.

1. Reconstruct, with out photograph­graphs, a childhood toy, together with what it felt, smelled, and tasted like.
2. Design a sculpture to be taken internally.
3. Make a crown. Give it away.
4. Buy a problem of {a magazine} that you’ve got by no means opened earlier than.
   Deal with it as the one surviving artifact of a vanished civilization.
   Use it to reconstruct the attitudes and values of that civilization.
   Create your personal artifact as a part of that civilization.
5. Draw the sensation of somebody —­ a relative —­ mendacity on prime of you and snarling when you strug­gle to stand up.
6. Mix two items of your clothes right into a garment that neither was designed for.
7. Discover a collaborator. Have them contact you fifty instances over a interval of two hours.
8. Draw the earlier US presidents from reminiscence. Draw the subsequent 10 out of your creativeness.
9. Make a chunk utilizing solely supplies you’ve got obtained by barter, with out foreign money.
10. Make a guardian packet: a bundle to be worn ­underneath your clothes to maintain you protected. It will need to have 10 ele­ments. Put on it for per week.
11. Holding your arms out out of your sides, ­measure the space out of your left to your proper hand. Make one thing that’s that size, plus two ft.
12. Make every day drawings that can’t include phrases.
13. Construct your divination deck. Embody the exercise of including a brand new card in your birthday.
14. Design your dream physique: What number of limbs does it have? What number of holes? What’s it lined with? Scales? Fur? The place is it most delicate? What half is it proudest of? What sort of mattress is most snug for it?
15. Describe your dream physique to an viewers and ask them the query of how they might look after it. Make drawings of their responses.
16. Construct a sculpture that produces the ­pleasure of being ignored.
17. Make a hopeful piece.
18. Strive once more in case your piece is about how hope by no means works out.
19. Carve a block of wooden and say goodbye to each piece you are taking from it.
20. Say goodbye to your self till the phrase loses all that means. Then sing it.
21. Describe the subjecthood your upbringing has granted you and ask the place you might be dissatisfied with it.
22. Draw the sensation of when your genitals really feel mistaken for the way you wish to masturbate.
23. Make a chunk that lies to you about your heritage.
24. Write a 500-­phrase clarification for a chunk you ­won’t ever make.
25. Forged your elbows, knees, crotch. Use the ensuing fragments to make one smiling face, one frightened face, and one asleep face.
26. Masturbate and be aware the precise qualities of the picture or situation that suggestions you into orgasm.
27. Each time you are taking a photograph­ graph, shift six inches to the aspect and take one other.
28. Paint a ­household meals onto the aspect of a constructing.
29. As soon as per week, make 10 drawings, every one by 4 inches. Depart these drawings as bookmarks in nooks on the cabinets in secondhand shops.
30. Take a vinyl rec­ ord and drill a gap 9/32 inches in dia­meter one inch from its heart. Utilizing this as the brand new spindle gap, play the document and rec­ord it, utilizing the recording as the idea for brand spanking new musical compositions.
31. Follow drawing ft and fingers.
32. Inform the story of your ­household, as soon as as a triumph and as soon as as a tragedy. In each tellings, solely whisper.
33. Decide a favourite ­album. Make one piece for every music.
34. Sit close to a wall and hint your shadow. No, the opposite one.
35. Discover ways to program a recreation for the unique Sport Boy.
36. Make a chunk, and grasp it in your house. ­After one 12 months, revise it. Repeat the ­course of for the subsequent 4 years.
37. Buy a potato. Take 50 photograph­graphs of it, attempting to make every as dif­fer­ent from the earlier ones as pos­si­ble.
38. Make a sculpture that confines you ­till you might be comforted.
39. With a chisel, fastidiously nick the laminate from a dresser you’ve got discovered that was discarded. Gouge the particle board that’s revealed till your entire floor seems to be fuzzy.
40. Wash ­till a form is modified.
41. Repair a prob­lem from a earlier piece in a brand new piece.
42. Inform lies. Benefit from the style of them.
43. Stroll ­till the concepts come.
44. Draw the sensation of ­folks turning away from you in embarrassment once you ask for assist.
45. Checklist your failings; make a chunk for ­each merchandise on the record.
46. In a public library, discover a favourite guide. Rely 10 books to the left after which use that guide as the idea for 4 new items.
47. Utilizing scrap cloth, make a flag for the nation you ­will set up after you permit this one.
48. Design two traps.
49. Create a pedestal for a well-known sculpture.
50. Make a banner for every of your pals.
51. Set up cabinets on the road. See what finally ends up on them.
52. Make a ­efficiency for only one particular person. Present it solely to them. Don’t doc or make every other rec­ord of it.
53. Have somebody sew ribbons to your pores and skin.
54. Design a vacation and the parade that celebrates it.
55. Every single day: a portray made from 10 strokes. Its floor could be any dimension or materials; strokes could be any size.
56. Make a drawing in regards to the assertion “I’m inside myself.”
57. Take the strategy of a sundae as the idea for a sculpture.
58. Design a monument to a different artist.
59. Construct the elements for a chunk that ­might be fi­nally assembled 10 years sooner or later.
60. Make be aware of ­each joke your ­household tells about itself. Rewrite them as songs.
61. Draw on your self with bruises.
62. Draw the sensation of ­these round you.
63. Keep in mind the potato you took 50 photograph­graphs of? Eat it and write an outline of the way it tastes on a shirt.
64. Put on that shirt and ask 50 different ­folks to take a photograph­graph of you in it.
65. Paint a ­recipe — no phrases.
66. In 10 photograph­graphs, present how a par­ticu­lar particular person does their job. Solely do that with their consent.
67. Write two lists of fifty objects every: “In my work I at all times ______________” and “In my work I by no means ______________.” For every of the subsequent 10 weeks, decide 5 of your “nevers” and do them.
68. Design a barrier. A sonic one.
69. Take Hamlet. Pre­despatched the narrative of the play in 10 discovered pictures. Edit the play to 100 traces.
70. Follow drawing with ft and fingers.
71. Discover a portray made earlier than 1600; re-­create one object depicted in it in three dimensions.
72. Stash items the place they ­is not going to be discovered ­till not less than 10 years after your demise.
73. Discover a black bag. Lower a gap in it. Put a white bunny within the bag.
74. For a day maintain each door open for not less than six folks earlier than you undergo it.
75. Create a drawing throughout a metropolis by tracing your steps. Scribble. ­Each 10 blocks, observe one thing and draw it.
76. Sculpt a self-portrait the place ­each a part of your physique that you just really feel is susceptible is rendered at twice its regular dimension.
77. Draw what you miss.
78. Script a ­efficiency of your cowardice.
79. Make 10 work on the theme “I forgive you.” Ship them to 10 folks picked at random.
80. Narrate the apocalypse as love at first sight.
81. Destroy all of the documentation you’ve got of a previous piece.
82. Make a chunk that each­one ­will name “intimidating.” Make a chunk that each­one ­will name “beneficiant.” Present them collectively and attempt to guess which is which. Ponder the extent to which ­these phrases are the identical.
83. Arrange a set level for different ­folks to donate issues that ­will cowl over a chunk that you’ve got made.
84. Draw the stacks of books in your house, bringing out the best way that they signify a weight that confounds every other small little bit of progress in your life. Draw the impossibility of shifting them and the ache impressed by that realization.
85. Outline your race after which betray it.
86. Make guardian packets (see task 10) for 5 of your closest buddies.
87. Design a chunk that ­will present a thanks for the one that cleans an exhibition area. Make it.
88. At a paint store, discover the colour that’s the fury you’re feeling when on a trip along with your accomplice understanding that you just ­will break up with them as soon as you come back residence. Buy sufficient of the colour to color your bed room. ­Each morning pour some on the ground and stroll via it.
89. Cowl up a tattoo.
90. No beards with out clothes; no clothes with out beards.
91. In any room, ­measure an area three ft in from the partitions. Transfer any earlier contents of the room into this new boundary. Spend three days inside this new assortment of objects. On the second day, request that collaborators make work to rec­ord your scenario from the periphery. On the fourth day, clear your self and the contents of the condensed room. On the fifth day, substitute the contents of the room with the work.
92. Write fan mail.
93. Create a ­T-shirt; then kind the band to go along with it.
94. Collect a listing from buddies of 10 phrases they affiliate with non-public. Put on ­these phrases publicly.
95. Go to an exhibition. Word the identify of every piece. Go residence and draw each bit from reminiscence and your record of names.
96. Take your initials. Draw a self-­portrait utilizing the letterforms as the one mark you can also make.
97. As soon as per week, create one object to furnish your Utopia.
98. Devise task 99.
100. Do what you’ve got left undone.