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 ...

These photos are from some classes I am teaching at Lill Street Art Center , a venerable institution on the north side of Chicago. I got to know about this warehouse-sized collection of artist's studios and fully kitted-out ceramics, painting, and printmaking facilities more than ten years ago, shortly after I moved to Chicago from the UK. At that time, if you were someone like me who was looking to make some work quickly before acquiring my own studio, people told you about the Chicago Printmakers' Collaborative and Lill Street. I used the CPC for a few years, then got my own studio. In 2011, I took a short ceramics class at Lill Street. And starting a few weeks ago, I began teaching my first classes there. The first class was a one-day intensive in Monoprints (bottom photo). The other class is a three week Journal and Sketchbook class, and in the photo you can see the participants spending an hour adding colour, collage, cut-outs, and other things to thei...

I've taught printmaking on and off before, usually in small groups or one on one, and quite enjoyed that. When I first had to teach a large class about five years ago, I nearly had a nervous breakdown, and it took me a long time until I wasn't completely terrified of going into a room to teach to ten or fifteen people. About once a year for the last few years, I've co-taught a class with my wife, called Journal and Sketchbook: Ways of Seeing (that's what the class is called, not my wife). She is a very experienced teacher, and is Associate Professor in Fiction Writing at Columbia College Chicago. Even having Patty as the lead pilot wasn't enough initially to quell the terror. But here we are in 2010, and tomorrow (Thursday) we begin to teach this class again, for fifteen weeks, and for the first time I am not unduly nervous. Practice makes for - well, less imperfect. There'll be a few nerves in the hours before the class, but once it starts, I know it will go ...