Creating Creativity: Three – five hours
During the workshop participants activate numerous distinct creative processes that have been culled from the twentieth and twenty-first century cultural contexts. They are applicable to practitioners of all of the arts disciplines. They include solo versus collaboration, inspiration versus premeditation, chance versus predetermination.
Art and Collaboration: Three – five hours
Making art can be a lonely pursuit. Such conditions are aberrant within human history. We have always been social beings. Even prior to the era of global exchange and impersonal markets, humans depended upon social exchanges to maintain their lives. It was through cooperation that they gained shelter, food, warmth, water, and transportation. Conviviality was more than a functional affair. This workshop explores ways to dissolve the boundaries isolating the self from other humans, and also from the impingements of the environment.
Crafting Your Artistic Identity: Three – five days
Self-knowledge is derived from the inside out (sensations) and from the outside in (observations). Each day students conduct exercises and create art projects that manifest a particular component of their personalities. The week culminates when students assemble these partial studies into a comprehensive portrayal of their unique artistic selves. The categories include the following forms of identity: physical fact, self-assessment, physical context, human relationships, material possessions, public self, alter ego, reflected self, professional self, aspiring self.
Sourcing Your Artistic Inspiration: Three – five days
Because contemporary culture is multi-cultural, there are no cultural traditions to guide an artist’s creative endeavors, Each person must discover them individually This workshop guides students in personal explorations of their potential sources of artistic inspiration. The workshop begins with an investigation of students’ personal biographies, learned cultural values, fantasies, inhibitions, ambitions, etc. They then seek links between these internalized components of themselves and the cultural context in which they live. These individualized explorations are balanced by opportunities to collaborate and receive feedback from others in the workshop.
Kiva Process: Three - five days (with Skip Schuckmann)
Kiva architecture utilizes local resources and nature’s processes instead of a predetermined plan that depends upon imported materials and industrial techniques. Kiva is served by the very powers it honors. A fire pit marks its core and initiates the process of excavation. Water softens and sifts the earth. Stone and vegetation provide the structure. Topography and geology determine the shape. Solar access and climate establish the orientation. In enacting kiva process, each period of activity is preceded by a period of observation. Observations are essential for gaining familiarity with the site and determining successive courses of action. Thus, exploration and planning develop a partnership that is ongoing and evolutionary. In the workshop, students create a kiva which is then utilized as a gathering place to examine the construction process and its ecological implications.