WORKSHOPS
walter gropius masters workshops
Previous Gropius Artists Gropius Workshop Photos
The Walter Gropius Master Artist Series is funded through the generosity of the Estate of Roxanna Y. Booth, who wished to assist in the development of an art education program in accordance with the proposals of Walter Gropius, who designed the Museum's Gropius Addition, as well as the Gropius Studios. The Museum is indebted to Roxanna Booth's son, Alex, for his participation in the concept development of the Gropius Master Artist Workshops.
Workshop fees -- Workshop fee, which includes materials, is $225 for non-members; $195 for Museum Members; $165 for teachers; and $120 for students. Meet-and-greet, first-day breakfast and daily lunch included in the workshop fee.
How to enroll -- Registration must be received at least 3 days in advance of the class starting date. All checks should be made to the Huntington Museum of Art. Most major credit cards are accepted by fax, phone, mail or in person. For more information, call (304) 529-2701.
Walter Gropius Masters Workshop Series Presents:
Jil Weinstock:
Transferring the Everyday:
The Individual and Group PortraitsThree-day workshop: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. February 6-8, 2009
Public presentation: February 5, 2009, at 7 p.m. Reception follows. Admission is free.
Exhibition: December 20, 2008-February 15, 2009.In this workshop, participants will work together to explore the idea of transference through hidden forms and textures in highly charged and/or emotional objects. Through a labor-intensive process of transforming these objects into visually alluring, conceptually rich works, we will navigate the boundary between abstraction and representation, considering both formal issues and cultural investigations by giving new form to life's objects.
We will seek to recall an object's past, as well as suggest its greater connection to our collective memories, desires, and failures. Please arrive at the workshop with at least three objects that can be transformed and disassembled that have a significant meaning to you or that you just find interesting: a toy, good luck charm, travel souvenir, piece of fabric, food packaging, an appliance, musical instrument, etc... And at least one of these items needs to be an important article of clothing. We will work together to create an installation on one of the museum walls that deals with individual and group identity, the single unit and the larger whole, and the intimate and the excessive. We will establish a dialogue with the architecture and the outside environment and invite viewers to bring their own histories to the work. Through these interactions, this installation will create its own imaginary community as well as speak to our shared experiences. The installation, in effect, becomes an individual and group portrait representing the body and identity both physically, metaphorically and abstractly while speaking to the ideas of sense, perception and behavior.
Weinstock BackgroundTurning textiles into sculptures, Jil Weinstock immortalizes vintage dresses and personal heirlooms in cast rubber. These fragile, provocative and slightly disturbing encapsulations utilize carefully pinched, tucked, and folded garments (many of which belonged to her mother and grandmother), as well as vintage men’s shirts and children’s clothing. Weinstock’s work examines issues of style, fashion as art, feminism, memory, and nostalgia while evoking a post-minimalist aesthetic. Hung on museum and gallery walls beyond our reach, the artist denies us access to the tactile qualities of the garments and instead presents them as explorations in color, form, and pattern, referencing the color field paintings of Mark Rothko, Gene Davis, Clyfford Still, or Helen Frankenthaler.
Weinstock writes the following about her work - “Clearly aged, the surfaces and objects from which they are constructed give way to the mystique of youth, youth fading and transforming beauty into something else. Also, these sculptural wall pieces refer to the transcendent experience. Varied bubbles and breaks in the rubber reveal the human presence of my hand; these imperfections glorify the space between the real and the ideal.”
Jil Weinstock, who was born in Los Angeles, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989, as well as a joint degree of Masters in Visual Studies from UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. Her work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions since 1994 including recent shows at Davidson Galleries, Seattle, Washington; Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California; Charles Cowles Gallery, New York; and Byron Cohen Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri. Her work has also been included in overseas solo exhibitions in Prague, Czechoslovakia; Vienna, Austria; Milan, Italy and London, England. Weinstock currently resides in New York City, where she teaches at the School of Visual Arts. Her work is represented by Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Byron Cohen Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri; and Charles Cowles Gallery, New York.
Walter Gropius Masters
Artist Series Presents:
Stephen Brown: The Color of Light:
Color Temperature in Contemporary Portrait PaintingThree-day workshop: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. April 3-5, 2009
Public presentation: April 2, 2009, at 7 p.m. Reception follows. Admission is free.
Exhibition: March 21, 2009-May 10, 2009.Canceled due to illness
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Walter Gropius Masters
Artist Series Presents:
Michaelene Walsh: Poetic ObjectsThree-day workshop: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. May 15-17, 2009
Public presentation: May 14, 2009, at 7 p.m. Reception follows. Admission is free.
Exhibition: May 9, 2009-July 5, 2009.
Poetic Objects
poem- n.
1) A composition designed to convey a vivid and imaginative sense of experience, characterized by the use of condensed language, chosen for its sound and suggestive power as well as for its meaning… 4) A quality that suggests poetry, as in grace, beauty, or harmony: the poetry of the dancer's movements.
-The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
What is a poetic object and why is it important to consider in our work as makers of objects? In this workshop we will attempt to address how artists begin to create poetic forms. The work and approaches of various artists and how they create poetic imagery will be discussed. Simple exercises will be introduced, geared to help participants uncover potential poetic images incubating within their own imaginations. Through demonstrations of sculptural hand-building techniques, as well as technical handouts about earthenware clay and surfaces, a good basis will be created for participants to begin fabricating and finishing small, hollow clay sculptures as explorations of their own poetic imagery. Options for the completion and installation of ceramic sculptural work will also be addressed.
Michaelene Walsh BackgroundMichaelene Walsh received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Crafts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from New York State College at Alfred. She is the associate professor of ceramics at Louisiana State University. Ms. Walsh has conducted numerous workshops and her work has been in countless exhibitions, publications and is held in many private collections.
“To best give an overview of my work, I would say that the impetus for it comes from my experience of reading poetry.” Ms. Walsh explains. “I am interested in how poets arrive at compelling poems. A good poet can take an ordinary word or image and put it together with another somewhat ordinary word or image to create a surprising feeling - a sensation in the gut that is unusual, striking, fresh and memorable. My goal as an artist is to try to do this visually - to bring seemingly disparate, ordinary, or unremarkable images together to form something memorable.
If you have eaten ice cream, marveled at a monkey, played with a doll, drawn a heart, or written a secret note on blue lined notebook paper, we have something in common, at least on the surface…
“I think of my best work as creating an opening or clearing a path for what is heartfelt and poetic in the ordinary to come through. Yet, I know too that latent within the ordinary are bittersweet and paradoxical feelings that betray these simple sentiments. Sweetness and pleasure felt in seeing or recalling certain objects or experiences often intermingle with feelings of sadness, loss and regret.”
