I will be teaching workshops this summer for children, teens, and adults both here in Columbus and in Portland, Oregon. Here's what and where:
Wexner Center for the Arts
Environmental , July 13-17, 1:30-4:30pm, ages 15-18. Do you prefer to run with the wind, feel the earth under your feet, and see the change of weather up close and personal? Work outdoors at Ohio State's beautiful Chadwick Arboretum in the workshop taught by sculptor Nicole Gibbs. Learn how a piece of garbage can be transformed into a piece of art, or how light, shadow, rain, dust, soil, or pollen can be made into an incredible fleeting visual you can capture in a digital photography. We'll recycle and repurpose found materials and elements to make temporary 2D and 3D sketches outside and then document them before they dissolve back to where they came from, like ghosts.
Natural Home, July 13-17, 9am-12pm, ages 6-7. Do you feel best surrounded by the natural world of trees, wind, sky, plants, animals, and weather? Why not make the outdoors your daytime home for a week? You'll create your own personalized dwelling out of impermanent, nontoxic materials working with sculptor Nicole Gibbs. Whether you build a human-size ground nest or a wispy, windy string home, each installation will be a metaphorical portrait of who you are when you are not indoors. This workshop takes place at Ohio State's Chadwick Arboretum.
Oregon College of Art and Craft
Drawing Water from an Empty Well: An Idea-Generating Workshop, July 18-19, 9am-4pm, adult, p. 12-13. There are multiple times in an artist's practice where the inspirational well seems dry--whether trying to find confidence at the outset of a new body of work or breathing fresh life into a familiar subject, medium or process. The visual artist's equivalent to "writer's block" represents a time when any direction is possible, often bringing excitement and stimulation as well as doubt and paralysis. This workshop is designed to provide an improvisational toolkit to overcome droughts in your art-making practice, or just to add a new burst of inspiration into a practice that is going well. The workshop starts with associative word exercises, journaling and quick sketching. Then the real fun begins: using a wide range of traditional and nontraditional materials, students will create quick individual drawings, some of which will use music as inspiration. The result will be 50-100 drawings that will act as a reference for materials, techniques, gestures and forms from which to draw future artworks. Prerequisites: basic drawing skills and an inquisitive, open-minded attitude.
Embracing Combustion: Using Fabric in Ceramic Sculpture, July 20-24, 9am-12pm, adults, p. 10. Have you longed to capture the beautiful folds, pleats, and puckers of fabric in ceramic sculpture? While it can take years to master the trompe l'oeil techniques of using only clay to replicate fabric's fluid movement, it takes only hours to turn an actual fiber garment or construction into a piece of ceramic art. In this weeklong series of half-day workshops, students learn the basic techniques for firing fabric. The instructor will share her specially-developed clay body formula, as well as her techniques for hanging, drying, patching and firing fabric. Because the fabric burns out of the piece and leaves a fragile clay shell, participants will also learn how to load and handle these uniquely delicate pieces. Each student will create a set of sample fired and glazed pieces, as well as one simple fired fabric garment or construction. Prerequisite: beginning ceramics course or equivalent.
