Bodyprints: A soulful exposé

Inspiration came to artist Terre Rybovich while she was delirious with fever, during a bout with the flu. She discovered a “backward” way of drawing.

Some of the results — eight of her works — were exhibited June 2-30, 2007 at Red Dot Contemporary in West Palm Beach.

“With a stick of charcoal, I blacken every inch of a sheet of paper that has been stapled to a board. I scrub away with the charcoal for about a half-hour. Then I put the paper on the floor,” Rybovich explained.

“I take off my clothes and lie down on it. I don’t think too much about how the print will look. But I have thought of poses that might get the most complete print.” Her bodyprints often turn out crisp, almost photographic.

But she isn’t finished. She places her drawing upright and contemplates it from a distance: “I start to see things in the shapes around the bodyprint — all the scrapes and footprints that occur as I lie down and get up. Shapes start to form images. I haven’t planned the next step. Then the print becomes landscapes, or things I never imagined.”

The trick, she said, is keeping those images from disappearing as she approaches her work, and to sketch it before she loses the images. Once she has what she wants on the paper, she writes about it in her memoir.

Over time, she has found, “These images began to add up to people and places that had transformative effects on me. They started being stories on my own life.”

Take, for example, Untitled No. 11. “If I had set out to draw a dress, it would not look like that. It would have a person inside of it, or be on a hanger. But this is more ambiguous because it was a dress left by the bodyprints. As I started drawing it in, I saw it was a little girl’s idea of a ball gown — more than just a dress. Then I tried to keep it simple, to honor the little-girl aspect of it.”

Untitled No. 11 includes romance and excitement. Rybovich explained, “In a funny, complicated way, this image embodies a childhood yearning that, in some midnight-blue kind of way, still exists.” In one’s décor, a work such as this adds a sense of mystery, depth and imagination.