Summer Workshops

1/BASKETS

White Square by Dail Behennah, 2006. White willow, silver plated pins, 16” x 16” x 3 1/2 “. Photo by Jason Ingram.

Line, Light, and Shadow: An Approach to Basketry Construction

The shadows that baskets cast and contain are often complex and beautiful and you will be encouraged to consider this aspect of the structures that you make. Ways of joining hard and soft materials will be demonstrated and, if necessary, invented in order that 2D and 3D forms can be constructed. Demonstrations, exercises, and discussions will provide inspiration, which will enable you to develop your own ideas. Participants will be encouraged to make samples, 3D sketches, and a more considered piece of work. All levels welcome.

DAIL BEHENNAH makes constructed forms from a variety of materials. She has maintained her studio practice for twenty years and has recently completed architectural public art commissions in a variety of settings. Dail Behennah’s work is held in many collections in the UK including those of the Crafts Council, London; the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; and The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. She has exhibited in the UK, Sweden, and Japan and in the US, exhibits regularly with browngrotta arts in Wilton, Connecticut. Dail Behennah has given workshops, short courses, and lectures in the UK and Sweden and her work has been included in many books including The Art of Basketry (Sterling/Chapelle), 500 Baskets (Lark Books), and Art Textiles of the World: Great Britain (Volume 3) (Telos Art Publishing). www.dailbehennah.com

1/BLACKSMITHING

Heron Andirons by Alice James, 2006. Forged and fabricated steel, 26” x 26” x 22”.

Blacksmithing for the Arts

The experienced artists, be he or she a metalsmith, painter, poet, or potter enrolling in this workshop will develop an advanced and intensive appreciation of ironwork, as well as hands-on understanding of the material. After translating ideas through drawing or writing, participants will proceed to the forge and complete two projects by the end of the session. Participants will learn a variety of forging skills and joinery procedures in such a way as to develop a personalized response to the technical methods presented. This is an opportunity to find out why the words “to forge” and “forging” have come to mean direct positive action. All levels welcome.

ALICE JAMES is a studio artist currently residing in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, west of Calgary. She started metalsmithing in 1986 at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. Her teaching experience includes Haystack; Penland; Peters Valley; Evergreen State College; and the Appalachian Center for Craft. Alice James has also demonstrated for ABANA and at many US and Canadian blacksmithing conferences over the past sixteen years. She is joined by her husband in their business, Flicker Forge, creating custom architectural ironwork for private residences. www.flickerforge.com

1/BOOK ARTS/PRINTMAKING

A Beckoning by Pati Scobey, 2004. Relief printing, letterpress, acrylic, 11” x 92” opened.

The Printed Book

Investigate the interaction of image and sequence while experimenting with innovative printmaking techniques, on and off the press. Initially, strategies for building visual narratives or dramatic sequences within a variety of book structures will be presented and explored. Concurrently, students will learn a form of water-based monoprinting that will allow them to develop a vocabulary of interchangeable components comprised of collagraphs, wood, linoleum, and stencils. These components will be used as improvisational tools during the printing process. Printing instruction will emphasize the manipulation of inks and color to achieve desired results. Each book structure taught will allow for a different organization of information and reader interaction. The workshop culminates in each participant’s creation of a printed book during the second week. All levels welcome.

PATI SCOBEY is a studio artist working in painting, printmaking, and bookmaking. An on-going project, Lost with the Poets, began during a residency at Albion College, Michigan and work from that project comprised a one-person exhibition at the college in 2007. Other residencies include the MacDowell Colony, the Oregon College of Art & Craft, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Among the grants Pati Scobey has received are: a Creative Artist Grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts and an Artist’s Book Production Grant from the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. Her work has been exhibited widely and is in the collections of the Getty Center, The British Library, and the Museum for the Book, Netherlands.

Gymnopaedia #4; A Piece for Four Voices, by Barb Tetenbaum, 2005. Letterpress on mouldmade paper, 11” x 7” closed. Photo by Stephen Funk.

BARB TETENBAUM has been printing artist books under the imprint, Triangular Press, since 1979. She is Professor and Department Head of Book Arts at Oregon College of Art & Craft in Portland. Barb Tetenbaum received a BFA from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and an MFA in Printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the recipient of two Fulbright awards to teach in Leipzig, Germany and in Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic. Her books are held in public collections in the US, Canada, England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and her work is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Gutenberg Museum; New York Public Library; Museum of Modern Art; and Deutsches Bucherei, Leipzig.

1/CLAY

Cups by Andy Shaw, 2009. Porcelain, 4” x 3”.

Tableware

Pots are objects that inherently rely on human touch, human scale, and human interaction. All at once they are visual, functional, and tactile. Establishing a dynamic blend of those three elements will be our task by identifying the design necessities of pots, by uncovering pre-conceptions of dishes, especially those that are round, and by considering innovative solutions to the functional form. Slide presentations, demonstrations, and readings will prompt discussions on specific issues relating to tableware design. An examination of how, when, and why we use dishes will reveal much about the social conventions which guide our use of them, as well as those conventions that are guided by the dishes themselves. We will use porcelain and high fire reduction. All levels welcome.

ANDY SHAW is an Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University. He has taught at Alfred University; Gettysburg College and Arcadia University, Pennsylvania; and Andrews University, Michigan, and conducted workshops at Arrowmont; Dickinson College; the Genesee Center for the Arts; and the Lansing Potters Guild. He received a BA in History from Kenyon College and an MFA from Alfred University, and his residencies include: the Archie Bray Foundation; Arrowmont; and The Clay Studio of Philadelphia, where he was the 2006–2007 Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Fellow. Andy Shaw’s work has been in exhibitions, including Tableware at The Clay Studio, Dinnerware at Lillstreet Art Center, and Affinity at the Icheon World Ceramics Center, Korea, and his work has been in Studio Potter, Ceramics Monthly, and Shards. shawtableware.com

1/FIBER

Flamer by Mark Newport, 2008. Hand knit acrylic and buttons, 80” x 23” x 6”.

Knitting the Absurd

Knitting can be meditative and its products are protective, comforting, special markers of relationships. What happens when we alter the familiar, like knitting, and use those expectations in unexpected ways? In this workshop students will combine the traditional patterns and products of knitting with humor, ambiguity, and the absurd to produce objects and experiences that surprise, amuse, and challenge us. Knitting will be used as a sculptural process, basing our technical explorations in garments and patterns then using that foundation to work beyond our expectations. Explorations of scale and materials will compliment discussions, readings, and slide presentations. All levels welcome.

MARK NEWPORT is the artist-in-residence and Head of Fiber at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. His work has been exhibited throughout the US, Canada, and Europe, including solo exhibitions at Cranbrook Art Museum; Here Gallery, Bristol, UK; The Arizona State University Art Museum; and the Chicago Cultural Center. Mark Newport was awarded a grant from Creative Capital Foundation and his work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin; and City of Phoenix Public Art, Arizona. He is represented by the Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, Washington and Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, Michigan.
www.marknewportartist.com

1/METALS

Fingerlift—From “Re:Pair and Imperfection” by Kiff Slemmons, 2006. Cast plaster by Lisa Gralnick, silver, 5” x 6 1/2” x 1 1/2”. Photo by Rod Slemmons.

Material as Metaphor

This class will be a joint inquiry into the cultural significance of jewelry, an attempt to dig below the surface of the decorative. Through lectures and discussion we will work with ideas and materials that might offer up metaphoric possibilities. Metaphor suggests language, and much of contemporary discourse involves this connection. We will look at the idea of narrative in jewelry and examine more closely its characterization. For example, when is something narrative and when is it lyrical? An extensive trove of non-precious materials, found fragments, and objects, will be provided as possibilities for making a collaborative cabinet of curiosities. Basic jewelry making skills required.

KIFF SLEMMONS is a self-taught metalsmith based in Chicago, who has shown nationally and internationally for over thirty years. Her work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Arts & Design, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Kiff Slemmons' most recent project Re: Pair and Imperfection, a traveling exhibition, originated at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2006 and traveled to the Palo Alto Art Center, California and to the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 2007. Her work has been published in American Craft and Metalsmith and in a number of anthologies of American and European jewelry. She has worked for ten years with a group of artisans in Oaxaca, Mexico, to produce paper jewelry, which will be shown in the Chicago Cultural Center in 2010.

1/WRITING

Things

In this writing workshop, we’ll take a close look at ordinary objects—stuff from home, glass shards, a clump of moss on Haystack’s grounds, broccoli from the kitchen—the unexamined things of our lives. Aiming for aesthetic delight and inventive surprise, we’ll experiment with the various ways language and imagination might serve to connect the visible to the invisible or, less grandly, to reveal the thing itself in a new light. A variety of poems, prose poems, and miniature essays will serve as our models. Expect to write a draft a day and to workshop some revisions. All levels welcome.

BARBARA HURD is the author of Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts and What Remains (2008), Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark (2003), Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, and Objects in this Mirror (1994). Her essays have appeared in the following journals: Best American Essays 1999 and 2001, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, Orion, Audubon, and others. The recipient of a 2002 NEA Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, Sierra Club’s National Nature Writing Award, and Pushcart Prizes in 2004 and 2007, Barbara Hurd teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. barbarahurd.com