Praeterita

  Since the pandemic began in early 2020, all my art-related classes have moved online. In terms of the subject of each class, the transition from in-person to online was seamless. Collage, handmade books, and the at-home sketchbook all worked out, mainly because the participants were making things with their own hands in their own space, while the teaching was demonstration followed by a friendly "show and tell." One class I was skeptical about was the first-time drawing class, which I taught for the Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago). The challenge: if I asked the students to set up their own individual still lives to draw from, the class might end up as a seven-way free for all, and it might be impossible to make the instruction general enough to cover all the different arrangements of objects. On the other hand, if I used a still life in my space as the model, they would be drawing from a 2-d image on their screens, as opposed to the in-person class where you see things in ...

 I'm now entering my sixth month of teaching online classes from home. It's all been an enjoyable experience so far, with the exception of the reason for why we're all doing this, of course. And sometimes the participants in my classes send me photos, such as this great one of Tula the cat giving her owner the "why aren't you petting/feeding me?" look over the top of the laptop: Then here are the books created by someone in my Beginning Bookbinding class: And more by another person: Clockwise, from the bottom right: a 5-hole Japanese stab binding: a 9-hole Japanese stab binding; a mini-accordion fold book; a soft cover pamphlet stitch; and a hardcover book with a chain link stitch binding on the spine. As I've said in earlier posts, everyone is patient with the circumstances of this kind of teaching, both with the technology, and with each other (because everyone works at a slightly different pace). I also get the sense that I will continue to do online te...

I've been busy teaching recently, with four classes a week keeping me occupied. Here are some images by participants in the classes: linocuts, etchings, handmade books, and drawings.

From June 28th 2010, I'm scheduled to teach a beginning printmaking class at the Interlochen Arts Academy's summer program for adults. Above is a slideshow of a similar class I taught in rural Illinois in 2009. It shows people working on their linoleum blocks, followed by some of the prints they produced. Note that no-one in the class had ever done this before, and that only a couple had had any prior art experience at all. Do you want to learn how to do this in the stunning surroundings of northern Michigan? Then go to the Interlochen page on this blog, follow the links, and sign up! Summer classes at Interlochen On another collagraph method Contact monoprints   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's meditation is on a medieval painting by the anonymous Master of Vyssi Brod, which is in the modern-day Czech Republic:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

As I said in my first post on the subject, Patty and I started this class after seeing how certain artists and writers used another medium – a writer who drew, or an artist who wrote. There are some writers whose drawings and paintings are well known – the nineteenth century English writer of nonsense verse, Edward Lear; Winston Churchill; D. H. Lawrence. After doing further research, we turned up some names that really surprised us. A lot of authors from the nineteenth century left behind paintings and drawings in their notebooks and archives. Some of them, like a competent watercolour by Charlotte Bronte, probably came about because middle class women of the time were expected to be able to paint a little, play music a little, sew a little, instead of getting a formal education. Now that time has raised Bronte far beyond the intellectual level of her male peers, we can look at the painting not as a genteel diversion for a Sunday afternoon, but as a form of expression that was relat...

I   am currently in week 4 of teaching a 15-week class called Journal + Sketchbook: Ways of Seeing. It’s a specialty class offered to students in the Fiction Writing program of Columbia College Chicago, where my wife and co-teacher Patty is an Associate Professor. They are encouraged to use their journals in all fiction writing classes; in this class, I offer the students ways to use drawing to further their writing process.   Patty had the initial idea for this class in 2005. She’s a writer, I’m an artist. A lot of our friends fall into these categories. We then started to notice how closely the two arts were linked in the work of many past artists and writers. Our initial digging around turned up about ten writer/artists and artist/writers who had dipped a toe into, or fully immersed themselves in the other medium as a means of taking a break from their usual practice, and also as a means of expressing similar things in that other medium.   Writer Number 1: Franz Kaf...