The Journal is a place where visual practices of creating images, shaping letters, arranging words and space all unite in one creative act. It can be a tool of self knowledge, a tool to handle emotions, to link the past to the future or to make yourself a better human. Participants will develop a creative practice of freely, clearly and honestly recording a well-rounded portrait of their own unique world and world-view. This class is designed to involve students in a variety of media (watercolor, printmaking, collage, and drawing) while creating their pages and finally to construct an artist’s book/ journal. The course can be adapted to all ages and ablilities and can be a workshop of between three and five days or a six week course, meeting once per week. This course ideally is taught where there is the opportunity to be outside and work from nature but it can also be adapted to the studio. Each class is designed to last approximately three hours.
Materials Supplied:
Paper which can take water/graphite/ink (Strathmore), watercolors, brushes, micron pens, water soluble printing inks, collage materials, bookboard, binding thread, needles, power drill (or awl), and objects to study if exploration is indoors.
Examples of the Five Exercises:
“Center of the Universe”- This beginning exercise is designed to make students aware of the resources of listening/smelling/feeling/hearing and to gain an appreciation of the smaller events which go on within the larger. They begin to mix words, images and symbols. Materials are limited to micron pens. ( A vocabulary of marks with these pens has been demonstrated before they go out into the field. ) Students sit in one place and mark this spot on their paper. They record all sensory information around them either with words /images/symbols.
“Aesthetic Treasure Hunt”- Most aesthetic reactions are vague i.e. we know we like something but we don’t know why. This exercise is designed to discover what attracts us individually and then take a close look at these features. Some of these attractions one discovers are a pattern (such as cottonwood bark), repeated shapes, rhythms, color, texture, arrangement of shapes, or the spaces between the shapes. A watercolor demonstration precedes this exercise, and students are encouraged to play with these treasures with brushes and paint.
Conclusion:
When students have completed a number of pages after several of these exercises, they learn to construct their individual books by first covering their covers (which have been precut) and then binding their pages with simple binding techniques. The final product (their own personal journal) is inevitably fullfilling.
Susan
Newbold • Artist, Painter, Printmaker • Fairfield, CT •
203-255-1455 • SNewb4488@aol.com |
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