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 started teaching some of my Printmaking and Book Arts classes online, an arrangement that I can see lasting at least into autumn, possibly beyond. The photo shows my setup: materials arranged on the cutting mat, laptop to my left on which I host the Zoom session for ten people, a ring light on a tripod for illumination, and my phone (mounted in the centre of the ring light) relaying a live feed of the table into the Zoom session, so the participants can see my hands as I demonstrate the different bookbinding techniques. In terms of equipment, the laptop and smartphone were things I already had, of course. I experimented with all kinds of software for connecting smartphone-live-feed to laptop, but in the end the simplest thing was just to get my phone to join the Zoom meeting as an extra participant, and then to highlight that 'box' on the Zoom screen. The ring light is the main new investment. I decided to fork over the extra money ($130) to buy the sixteen inch diamet...