Events

Homo Nota, human beings mark.

We are fundamentally markers. In the physical sense all of the arts are created with marks-from the visual and plastic arts through theater and literature. In the metaphoric sense our conversations mark each other, and we are marked my others. With varying influences we leave trace of who we are in every movement with varying influences. This introductory class gives you a sense of how re-defining marking through various approaches opens up innovative ways of being in relationship in the world.

The Introduction to Marking gives you a chance to play with marks and capture a joy of new discovery as we take you through a couple of interactive marking approaches. This course also provides a preview of the Marking Seminar, a journey of 25 marking sessions that provide a foundation and vocabulary for the current Zoom and in-person sessions, Marking as Being at Anavami Studio. The registration fee for this self-paced on-line course is $50. This includes instruction in 2 marking approaches.

Monoprint as Marking online course $50 & in studio $75 includes materials

Saturday, November 5th, 9 am to 12 p.m.

Monoprints offer an intriguing experience to make marks when augmenting lack of control. The ink last on the plate is what touches the paper first but it is often covered by the previous layers, making it almost impossible to calculate how the final result. The attitudes of mystery, whimsy, confusion, and unknowing are cultivated in this Wobbling the Paradigm approach. We start working in neutral earth colors and natural colorants until we begin printing.

This is a three-hour workshop using a gel plate or piece of plastic to create marks through the spirit of play. These markings are printed on thin tissue paper and will be accessed for collage as we mark further on a bigger substrate.

This approach also helps add to your vocabulary for the Marking Seminar.

There is an alert here, as monoprinting can be very addictive.

The Marking Seminar is a collection of 25 marking approaches that were developed as a course to prepare for the community working in Wobbling the Paradigm. These approaches allow us to explore our relationship to things, people and systems.  Playfulness is the key to most of these approaches. An example is when we feel our own face with one hand and without looking translate the sensation through marks on to a paper with the other simultaneously. It offers a new way of perceiving ourselves as well as a glimpse into a different reality.  In another approach we stand back a few feet while using a pen or brush at the end of a long stick, allowing for the imprecision to make interesting marks. This is a self-paced online course but also includes 3 online conferences with Majio (to be arranged).

Some approaches the MARKING SERIES covers:

Collaged Asemic Writing & Decorative Paper

• ways to cultivate marks that are naïve-fresh and authentic, like those made by children
• approaches to going beyond control by creating a conversation with chance
• listening to the materials, specific time and place to begin to trust a greater directive.
• tactile markings change our dominating visual connection to the world by marking from our other senses
• soft marks from my training in Japanese calligraph expands our customary hard point drawing and writing into a more spacial interaction
• invisible marks are not seen until the next layer of marking reveals them
• textural markings with modeling paste create marking that interact dramatically with the next layer of markings
• subtracting marks is a way of making new spaces

These experiences in marking:

King with Wandering Blue Eye

• build a new vocabulary and attitude in the use of materials
• create marking pieces which reflect novel ways of perceiving and experiencing the world
• wobble the art paradigm developed by left-brain art training and cultural norms
• develop alternatives to habitual aesthetics
• begin to sense the life force of everything around us
• actual change our relationship to the world
• help us to think more instinctively and innovatively
• allow more comfort with uncertainty and confusion
• help you begin to feel a collaboration as you are not identified with the work

Come into the studio and explore, through large-format acrylic mixed media, the realities that we have created and h ow through the creative process we can open new possibilities. It is not about technique in painting but more about cultivating poetry of life and innovation as an attitude of choice.

$250 for four 3-hour sessions, all materials included.

Friday mornings 10-1 pm bring lunch or snack.

The first workshop is Returning to Oneself… We look to the story of the Selkie where the feminine has been forced to live in a world that is not soul-nurturing or creative. Longing for home, a place of autonomy in balance with the natural world.  A place to creatively exchange with both worlds loosening the constrictions and assumptions of power and expectation.  This painting/marking process offers a deep exploration through the creative play of perspectives that change habitual reality. Empowering, reflective, and offering new possibilities, this workshop leads you to a more creative, juicy, flavorful, and autonomous sense of being.

This is the fourth session in our Wobbling the Paradigm series.  The first three sessions included replaying and redefining marking and techniques, breaking the old through shapeshifting, and making space for the reality of collaboration.   Marking Into Being brings us to a much more personal examination of our role by broadening our perspectives and reflecting on how we want to transverse our archetypal forest-of-art.  We will explore what can emerge if we allow ourselves broader perception and creation of our own being as shaped by the possibilities of our selfhood. 

Studio Anavami routinely presents workshops in Mexico, Costa Rica, Italy, Puerto Rico, New Mexico and other locales. Keep an eye out for the 2023 schedule.