Sunday, November 29, 2009

Rumpus Featured Workshop Artists





Greenfield Center School Rumpus is thrilled to have three local artists/craftspeople offering workshops or demonstrations at Rumpus this year. From 11-1 fine artist Lisa Henry will offer an all-ages, drop-in, contour drawing workshop, working with bicycle gears and parts. Participants will have as long or as short as they want to utilize oil pastels and crayons to explore contour drawing with Lisa's guidance. Lisa will have a small display of recent works.


Also at 11, book artist Steve Daiber will offer a bookmaking workshop for children grades 1-4 (and their parents.) At 1pm he will offer a second workshop, this one for students in 5th-8th grades. Particpants in both workshops will leave with at least one completed book. Please call to pre-register for Steve's workshops as space is limited, (413-773-1700.) Steve will have, for sale, copies of his special edition book El muro by Eduardo Hernandez Santos (with a generous 30% of proceeds going to the Center School!) in addition to other books for sale, show and tell.


From 2-4 fiber craftsperson Laurie Smith will demonstrate basic and complex basket weaving skills. She will have a collection of baskets for sale.

At 2pm herbalist Rebecca Golden will offer an herbal bath salts workshop. Rebecca has a vendor booth at the Craft Fair, but will come to the workshop portion of Rumpus to offer her skills and knowledge around creating aromatic and replenishing bath salts. This is a drop-in, first come, workshop open to 30 participants of any age.


Artist Information:

Lisa Henry is a Pioneer Valley artist working in charcoal, graphite and watercolor. After receiving her BFA in Design, and traveling extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Canada she returned to the valley to be part of its vibrant artistic community, and to enjoy the natural beauty of Western Massachusetts.

I delight in what I see. Wherever I go, I capture images, bold and inspiring - first with my eyes, then with my camera. Later, I study and begin to understand each subject as I sketch. It is not until I add layer upon layer of darkness that the light begins to emerge. Graphite, charcoal, and watercolor in sepia tones are all patient media, willing to wait as I apply them, very slowly to the page. I make no assumptions about my subject, having instead complete faith in what I observe.”

Lisa M. Henry's email is: mixedmediaworkshop@comcast.net

Steve Daiber is a book artist and researcher with a special focus on Cuba and transgender issues. Steve will be offering two workshops. One for students (and their parents) grades 1-4 and the other for students grades 5-8.

Steve Daiber's website is

www.redtrilliumpress.com

Steve's Flicker site with photos of Cuban prints and print shops in Havana http://www.flickr.com/photos/redtrilliumpress/collections/72157621108382865/

And the Flicker site for his artist residence in Vietnam last November

http://www.flickr.com/photos/redtrilliumpress/collections/72157612084206668/

Steve was interviewed this fall on his collaborations with Cuban Artists at The Art Blog http://theartblog.org/2009/11/talking-with-steven-daiber-about-art-cuba-and-el-muro/

Steve's recent works are Almendrones,El Mar and El Muro.

Almendrones is a collaborative project with ten Cuban printmakers Steve came to know while working in six different print shops in Havana. Their works reflect their reality of living in Cuba where recycling of materials is a necessity of life and a creative art form. They offer in the volume a reflection of their lived experience with pre-American cars.

El Mar is a whirlwind scroll of a Cuban geography book and the April 2006 Cuban newspaper Granma. Early in the month Granma reports on the Cuban national baseball team’s return from the World Games and later in April Granma celebrates of the battle of Playa Giron, an ill-fated invasion attempt by the US known here in the States as the Bay of Pigs. Printed on the newspaper are wood cut images of fish found in the waters off Cuba. Contemporary images of ball players, street scenes and the Black Panther William Brandt along with historical postcards are silk screened over pages of Cuban geography.

El Muro is a collection of ten offset triptych photographs by Eduardo Hernández Santos and two bilingual essays by the artist and the young and insightful Cuban ethnographer Abel Sierra. Eduardo Hernández Santos made these photographs of homosexuals, transgenders, and crossdressers in the summer of 2005 at Havana, Cuba’s seafront wall. Taken together, the pictures in this book tell a remarkable story of human endurance and triumph. Hernández Santos presents his subjects not as passive players but as people who struggle (though more quietly than not) against discrimination even though such struggle is very risky.

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