Summer 2012 11Summer 2012 11

JULY–NOVEMBER WORKSHOPSat the MENDOCINO ART CENTER

CERAMICSCOLLABORATION: FROM THE WILD TO THE WOODSScott Parady & Jason WalkerJuly 16–20

UTILITARIAN SCULPTURE/SCULPTURAL UTILITYDoug BroweJuly 30–August 3

NATURE TRADITION:CULTIVATING INSPIRATIONAdam fieldAugust 13–18

SENSUOUS ENCOUNTERS:DESIGNING ENGAGING FORMSgwendolyn yoppoloAugust 27–31

COMMUNITY CLAYDerek HamblySeptember 5–October 11

FORM AND SURFACE EXPLORATORYDerek HamblyOctober 2–23

NERIKOMIArie GrieOctober 6–8

ANYONE CAN CENTER AND BEYONDMichael BerkleyOctober 20–21

SKIN DEEP – EXPLORING SURFACE TEXTURESarah LoganNovember 10–11

ANAGAMA ON THE EDGENick SchwartzNovember 12–16

FIBER ARTSTEXTURE SCREENINGCindy ShawJuly 14–15

DREAM LANDSCAPE: EXPLORING EMBELLISHMENTSRose HughesJuly 16–20

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGEDeborah fellJuly 21–22

BUSINESS ASPECT OF ARTDeborah fellJuly 23

FREE FORM PIECINGDeborah fellJuly 27–29

SILK PAINTING WITH JEAN-BAPTISTEDaniel Jean-BaptisteJuly 30–August 3

EXPLORING MARK MAKINGNick ComanAugust 6–10

POINT AND SHOOT FABRICKerby SmithAugust 13–15

DESIGNING ART QUILTSLura Schwarz SmithAugust 16–18

MAGIC OF BASKETRYSusan L. MillerSeptember 22–23

THE LANGUAGE OF COLOR IN TEXTILESAdriane NicolaisenSeptember 26–October 31

WEAVING TAPESTRYTricia GoldbergSeptember 28–30

BEGINNING SEWINGNodja JonesSeptember 29–30

MAGNIFICENT MONOTYPESMarsha ShawOctober 6–7

SECRETS OF SHADOW WEAVELinda HartshornOctober 12–14

DRUMS OF TRANSFORMATIONLynne BaurOctober 12–14

FIELD STUDIES IN SILKSusan Louise MoyerOctober 19–21

POLYMER CLAY BOOKSDayle DoroshowOctober 20–21

MORE TAPESTRYKathe Todd-HookerNovember 2–4

3D ADVENTURES: BEASTS IN THE JUNGLESusan ElseNovember 3–4

FINE ARTCHROMALIOUSAlicia KeshishianJuly 13–15

WORKING WITH THE MODEL, LOOSELYJudith GreenleafJuly 14–15

PAINTING – TEXTURE, COLOR, FEELINGJan SittsJuly 16–19

SEEING PEOPLE: PAINTING PEOPLE IN OILSeamus BerkeleyJuly 16–20

DRAW LIKE A PAINTERJeff LeedyJuly 20–22

INVENTIVE COLLAGRAPH PRINTMAKINGRobert RhoadesJuly 23–26

INVENTING A UNIVERSEJesse AllenJuly 23–26

12 Mendocino Arts Magazine

CREATING ‘WOW’ WITH PASTELSElaine Leedy and Jeff LeedyJuly 27–29

MIXED MEDIA MEETS MELTED WAXMira M. WhiteJuly 30–August 3

REALISTIC PORTRAITURE IN PENCILPeggy MagovernAugust 4–5

FLOWER BASICSBirgit O’ConnorAugust 4–6

COLOR AND SPACEJean GallagherAugust 6–10

BEYOND FLOWER BASICSBirgit O’ConnorAugust 8–12

LET’S PAINT IN WATER MIXABLE OILSMariko IrieAugust 11–12

PLEIN AIR WATERCOLORJohn HewittAugust 13–17

ABSTRACTION FROM NATURETesia BlackburnAugust 16–19

LUMINOUS OILSBrian DavisAugust 20–24Optional: August 25–26

PLEIN AIR OIL PAINTINGJeanette Le GrueAugust 24–26

ANIMAL FORMS IN MIXED MEDIAPamela BlotnerAugust 27–31

CHASING SHADOWSLarry BencichSeptember 8–9

ANATOMICAL LANDMARKS FOR ARTISTSLarry BencichSeptember 10–14

WATERCOLOR DRAMA USING THE WHITE OF YOUR PAPERPatricia Martin OsborneSeptember 15–16

NATURE IN THE ABSTRACTLynne CunninghamSeptember 15–16

TROMPE L’OEIL / MURAL WORKSHOPBlagojce StojanovskiSeptember 17–21

PLEIN AIR WATERCOLORMichael ReardonSeptember 22–23

EXPLORING CONTÉ CRAYONLinda Kay PapadakisSeptember 22–23

FRESCO PANEL (DA VINCI – VEROCIO)Blagojce StojanovskiSeptember 24–28

WATERCOLOR YOUR WAYNancy CollinsSeptember 27–November 1

SKIES, SUNSETS AND SILHOUETTESNancy CollinsSeptember 29–30

COLLABORATIVE PAINTING IN ACRYLICRicia Araiza and Michael LeventhalSeptember 29–30

ADVANCED PAINTINGBlagojce StojanovskiOctober 1–5

ARTISTIC PAPERJoan RhineOctober 6–7

PAINTING WITH PAPERSandy OppenheimerOctober 6–7

DRAWING FURRY BEST FRIENDSPeggy MagovernOctober 13–14

MONOTYPES I – IMAGES AND TEXTUREBob RhoadesOctober 13–14

MONOTYPES II – MEDIUM AND MESSAGEBob RhoadesOctober 20–21

MYTHOLOGY IN COLLAGERachel LeibmanNovember 3–4

STUNNING ABSTRACTS WITH SOFT PASTELSMira M. WhiteNovember 3–4

PAINT, DRAW, PAINTKaren BowersNovember 10–11

DECIPHERING THE DIGITAL CAMERALarry WagnerNovember 10

CREATING ARTISTIC PHOTOSLarry WagnerNovember 11

CREATING ARTISTIC PHOTOS – LABLarry WagnerNovember 12

JEWELRYCLOISONNÉ ENAMELING MADE EASYRicky frankJuly 23–27

CLOISONNÉ & CHAMPLEVÉ ENAMELING, 2 & 3 DIMENSIONALPatsy CroftJuly 30–August 3

FABRICATING GORGEOUS JEWELSPatsy CroftAugust 6–10

ART CLAY – ANYTHING GOESArlene MornickAugust 13–15

ARGENTIUM AND SILVER METAL CLAY: RING PARTNERSArlene MornickAugust 16–17

MOKUME GANE SEAMLESS BAND RINGSEric BurrisAugust 20–22

FLAMEWORK GLASS BEADMAKINGHarlan SimonAugust 21–24

FLAMEWORK SPECIAL TOPICS/GUIDED PRACTICE SESSIONSHarlan SimonAugust 25–26

CHAMPLEVÉ JEWELRY USING LASER ETCHED ACRYLIC MODELSDr. John Cornacchia and Marge StewartAugust 24–26

Summer 2012 13

ORGANIC METALSMarne RyanAugust 27–31

FABRICATE: TO MAKE BY ART OR SKILL AND LABORNancy GardnerSeptember 14–16

CASTING – YOU CAN DO IT!Barry SchragerSeptember 21–23

METAL CLAY MEDLEY: EXPLORING SILVER, COPPER AND BRONZE METAL CLAYSMary Neuer LeeOctober 5–7

OLD WORLD ENGRAVINGLes Bryant and Andrea KenningtonOctober 12–14

HOLLOW FORMS – METAL CLAYPatrik KusekNovember 3–4

BASIC GEMSTONE AND PEARL SLAMPenny NisenbaumNovember 10

SCULPTUREWORKING WITH THE MODEL, LOOSELYJudith GreenleafJuly 14–15

OUTDOOR SCULPTURE IN CAST STONEJudith GreenleafJuly 16–18Optional: July 19–20

CREATING A PICTORIAL BAS RELIEFColin LambertJuly 23–27

DARJIT FREEFORM SCULPTUREBrent SumnerAugust 6–8

CHASING AND REPOUSSÉ IN COPPERHeather McLartyAugust 31–September 2

FIGURATIVE STONE CARVINGRobert MilhollinSeptember 6–8

SCULPTURE IN WOOD, STONE AND MARBLEBlagojce StojanovskiSeptember 10–14

VISIONS IN GLASS MOSAICSNancy ShelbySeptember 15–16

SCULPTURE IN WATER-BASED CLAY AND PLASTELINEBlagojce StojanovskiOctober 8–12

BEGINNING BLACKSMITHINGGert RasmussenOctober 20–21

BASIC BLACKSMITHING TOOLSGert RasmussenOctober 26–28

Please visit the Mendocino Art Center’s Web site at www.MendocinoArtCenter.org for complete descrip-tions of all workshops. 707 937-5818, ext. 10

14 Mendocino Arts Magazine

in the half century of its existence, the Mendocino Art Center has welcomed a number of famous master artists, but the arrival of Blagojce Stojanovski is a high-water mark for artistry. He is truly a master of the arts, internationally known as a Fine Artist in the widest definition of that term, excelling at painting, drawing, sculpture, fresco, bas relief, printmaking, trompe l’oeil, and design. He doesn’t work in one medium, but many: bronze, wood, marble, pen and ink, graphite, watercolor, oil. This hugely accomplished artist is now offering Master Classes (intensive immersion in draw-ing, painting, and sculpture) to MAC’s students, including courses for credit through MAC’s new affiliation with Woodbury College.

Blagojce is a long way from home – “home” being his native Macedonia, the land of Alexander the Great – where he was born and raised and began (“from the cradle”) his distinguished artistic career. Even as a very young child, he was drawn to all things artistic as a means of expressing him-self, and comfortable from the start with an unlimited range of mediums. Blagojce says, “For me, everything was easy. Artists are born, not made!”

He had his first exhibit at age 12, winning recognition from the International Children’s Exhibition for Fine Art.

Blagojce’s work from the beginning to this day has always strongly reflected the influences of his father, his culture, and the historical heritage of Macedonia. The inspirations for his artwork are “reflections of my emotional explora-tion of the Balkan peninsula, Europe’s artistic rebirth, and

a passion for embracing the Western world’s ancient and stylistic past, fused with mod-ern significance.”

In Macedonia, Blagojce studied art and architecture, and worked on a number of projects restoring old build-ings, churches, and artifacts. In 1988, he came to the east coast of the United States. He quickly established himself as a fine artist, exhibiting and attracting an international cli-entele for his paintings, sculp-tures and portraits. In 1995 he made the trip west to his current home in Pacific Grove, near Monterey, where for sev-eral years he ran his own gal-lery and taught workshops.

Blagojce describes his own unique style as an amal-gamation of everything he has learned in his life; his style incorporates his “entire

BLAGOJCE STOJANOVSKI,

Master ArtistBy Peggy Templer

Libyan Sibyl, 60” x 48”, iron pigments on canvas, study after Michelangelo’s fresco from the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Summer 2012 15

persona.” His approach is humani-tarian; his interest is in people, soci-ety, and the human soul, and features a lot of figurative work. His stylized art seems to have one foot in the cen-tury of the great European masters, another in the age of impressionism and yet another in the contempo-rary, abstract art world. He refers to his work as a “bridge connecting the last centuries to the present, allow-ing us to walk in this new century with the spirit of the old masters.” His work is soulful, passionate, powerful, and strongly resonant of his Macedonian roots. One of his favorite motifs is the horse, and his description of the horse as icon could just as easily describe Blagojce himself: “…all combined in one soul, with the power of thunder and movement that is like a ball of fire….”

Blagojce has studied with a long list of world famous master artists. He says he has studied not to learn techniques or style, but to try to comprehend the mind of the artist at work – the thought pro-cesses that result in cre-ation. That is how he hopes his students will approach his teaching. “An art class is not a factory. We are not making shoes,” he says. He is looking for “students who have potential. If they have that I can help them from there. But they also need to know the impor-tance of listening.”

Blagojce deplores the lack of emphasis on the basics that he sees in contemporary art education. “We’ve lost 500 years of knowledge. Students are not learning the fine arts in all the detail that is required. I cringe when I hear an art instructor say, ‘You don’t need to know how to draw in order to do a fine painting.’ Of course you need to know how to draw!” Drawing an analogy from modern transportation,

Blagojce says the fine arts are like an 18-wheeler or a bus. Every “wheel” (composition, color, design, draw-ing, anatomy, perspective, etc.) is crucial. “If you don’t have all the wheels on the bus, you’re not going to move forward.”

Blagojce believes the artist needs to give back to society, and has given freely of his time and talent to help non-profit organizations across the country, including Boys and Girls Clubs, Meals on Wheels, Toys for Tots, Make-a-Wish Foundation, and countless others. He has provided poster art for many of these groups. His book American Art Posters is a collection of this wonderful “art for a cause.” “If God gives you a spe-

cial talent,” he says, “that brings responsibility.”

SCULPTURE IN WOOD, STONE AND MARBLESeptember 10–14

TROMP L’OEIL / MURAL WORKSHOPSeptember 17–21

FRESCO PANEL (LEONARDO DA VINCI – VEROCIO)September 24–28

ADVANCED PAINTINGOctober 1–5

SCULPTURE IN WATER-BASED CLAY AND PLASTELINEOctober 8–12

For detailed descriptions visit www.MendocinoArtCenter.org

LEARN FROM A MASTER ARTIST! Blagojce Stojanovski will be teaching five, week-long workshops this fall at the Mendocino Art Center.

Clockwise from top: Boy with Balloons – Flying High, 48” x 36”, oil on canvas, from the “Children’s Series”.End of the Game, 52” x 35”, oil on canvas, from the series “Once We Were Children Too”. Ice Cream Man and the Children, 50” x 38”, draw-ing, graphite on BVK-paper, from the series “Once We Were Children Too”.

16 Mendocino Arts Magazine

By Debbie L. Holmer

JEWELRY COORDINATOR

Nancy Gardner

Meet the Staff…

Scarf clasp, sterling silver, carnelian.

Walking along Main Street in Mendocino, I have a number of favorite little shops that I like to visit. One of them is the Mendocino Jewelry Studio, so I was delighted to finally meet the owner/operator Nancy Gardner. As well as her own work, Nancy’s shop features handcrafted works by other local Mendocino jewelers, painters, ceramicists, and stained glass artists. “This area has an amazing amount of very talented people. I am honored to have a gallery where I can exhibit some of their work.” In addition, Nancy offers custom and repair services.

In her freshman year of high school, Nancy took a metalsmithing class and, as she says, “I just really fell in love with working with metal.” One of her greatest influences, however, was her grandmother. As a child in Clarence, New York, Nancy would spend hours, “playing with my grandmother’s jewelry, which was kept in a brown velvet box in the attic. Although filled with mostly costume jewelry, there were a few pieces of fine jewelry. So, it seems kind of natural that I’ve gone this direction.”

Nancy followed her dreams to Europe where she studied in Siena for a semester and learned old world

goldsmithing from master craftsmen in both Italy and Portugal. “I fell in love with Italy and found a school in Florence to further my studies, spending a semester at SACI – Studio Arts Center International, followed by an independent study in 1984 at AR.CO, an art university in Lisbon, Portugal.”

Nancy graduated from Buffalo State College with a B.A. in design, concentration in metalsmithing and then returned as an instructor at AR.CO, teaching beginning metalsmithing.

After moving to Mendocino in 1985, Nancy became a bench jeweler at Studio 2, working for Barry Schrager, owner, while at the same time exhibiting her work at various galleries and shows throughout the United States and abroad.

Nancy has taught silver and gold jewelry fabrica-tion, soldering, and repousse, both in Europe and at the Mendocino Art Center. It was a natural move for her to become the coordinator of jewelry classes at the Mendocino Art Center this year.

Although Nancy likes working with both silver and

Nancy Gardner photo by Larry Wagner.

Summer 2012 17

gold, she especially likes work-ing with gold. “It’s a little trickier until you get to know it,” states Nancy, “but when you do have experience, it’s a lot quicker and crisper.”

When first developing a piece or line of pieces, Nancy does a lot of sketching. For some of her larger pieces, like the trillium, Nancy actually dissected the flower, examining all the parts to see how it was made, so her work is botanically correct.

For the young jeweler start-ing out, Nancy recommends that they make a decision as to where they want to put their focus. “Are they interested in being an aca-demic jeweler or do they want to be a bench jeweler? Or they might want to focus on stone-setting – many decisions to be made.”

What other jewelry artists does Nancy most admire? Rene Lalique and the Fouquet family – three generations of jewelers.

How does her interest in other areas inform her work? “I love to garden and love natural beauty and do a lot of ‘nature’ jewelry. I love picking something up and thinking how I can recreate it into metal. Every piece of jewelry that I create can be worn and worn comfortably – that’s important to me.”

When someone looks at her jewelry what does she

want them to see? “I want them to ‘feel’ comfortable and have enjoy-ment from it. I like it a lot when one of my pieces brings a smile to someone’s face. It’s kind of the spice of life, isn’t it?” Much of her work still reflects the European influences of fine craftsmanship and ageless elegance.

Nancy has been an active part of the Mendocino community, raising her two children here. She was the coordinator of “The Parents” Group – a type of PTA created to help MUSD; committee member for the renovation design of the Mendocino K–8 school; chairwoman of Measure AA – a $25 million bond to rebuild the Mendocino K–8 school, improve the water main to Mendocino and restore the Mendocino Recreation Center building (the bond passed

by 70%); president of the Citizens Oversight Committee; member of MUSE (main coordinator for the Big Fun Fair); and president of MUSE (Mendocino Unified School Enrichment, a non-profit dedicated to raising funds to support the arts in Mendocino schools).

The Mendocino Jewelry Studio is located at 45104 Main Street in Mendocino. For more information, visit Nancy’s website at www.mendocinojewelry.com or phone 707-937-0181.

Pendant, 14ky, tourmaline, fresh water pearl, diamond.

Hair comb, sterling silver, 14ky, moonstone, chrysocolla.

Ring, sterling, 14ky, iolite , chrome tourmaline.

Sterling silver, 14ky, pink tourmaline, moonstone, iolite.

18 Mendocino Arts Magazine

Just steps to the beach anda stroll to fine restaurants, galleries and

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800 780-7905 • 707 937-5150www.oceanfrontmagic.com

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Art Center UkiahA Community Art Center

Corner GalleryAn Artist Cooperative

www.artcenterukiah.org

201 S. State StreetUkiah, California707-462-1400

Tuesday–Saturday 11:00am–5:00pm

EVENTS · EXHIBITSWORKSHOPS · ART WALK

Summer 2012 19

SuperStarSummer InStructorS

DOuG BrOWe brings 38 years of experience as a self-supporting ceramic artist to his workshop students. He prides himself on bringing a “fresh look” to new work, enabling him to help developing ceramic students find their own voice. “They may

have heard or felt that inner voice, but it just hasn’t fully arrived. That’s where I can really be of help,” Doug says.

Doug started his own work in ceramics with an apprenticeship and a yearlong stint with several British potters. Back in the U.S., settled in the Ukiah Valley, he established the Hoyman/Browe Pottery Studio with Jan Hoyman. Their emphasis was creating handmade, utilitarian ware using local materials. Their studio attracted national recognition and apprentices from the U.S. and abroad. Today, many of those apprentices are involved in contemporary ceramics. Doug refers to this group as “The New Functionalists” – artists “who are technically trained in fine art using utilitarian ceramics as their art form.”

Doug’s knowledge of prospecting and mining local materials brought him to the attention of Potters for Peace, who asked him, in 2002, to set up a pottery in a Burmese refugee camp, using local materials. He also taught pottery making and adobe kiln building, and was so inspired by the experience, that, at the age of 50, he returned to college for a Master’s of Art Degree so that he could teach ceramics at the college level. He was hired in 2007 as the head of the Ceramics Department at Mendocino College, where he teaches full time.

Doug continues his own studio practice at Doug Browe Ceramics in Elk. His current interest is “the relationship of architecture and human figures on our collective lives. I use this interwoven relationship to express a variety of personal and social issues in my work.”

Students should expect a lively, interactive workshop with Doug Browe, as he brings his own excitement to the making of sculptural clay objects. Time permitting, students may even take to the field to prospect for local materials.

DOUG BROWE

N

July 30–August 3Utilitarian Sculpture / Sculptural Utility

DEBORAH FELL

N

July 21–22Postcards from the Edge

July 23Business Aspect of Art

July 27–29Free Form Piecing

CERAMICS

DeBOraH FeLL says, “I make quilts because they are a means of self expres-sion, combining the beauty of art and the comforting tradition of quilting. I have made quilts to celebrate great happiness and to depict shadowed confusion, and to

maintain the balance of my inner self.When Deborah first became interested in tradi-

tional quilting, she went the total immersion route, taking 13 classes and creating 21 quilts in short order. A family tragedy, however, pushed her off the tradi-tional quilting path, when her struggle to express her emotions resulted in the creation of a quilt top that was new, spontaneous, and free form – her first art quilt. As she explains, art quilts and traditional quilts are structurally the same, with three layers (top, bat-ting, back), but different uses: traditional quilts are for covering the bed or the body, whereas art quilts are a fine art form meant to hang on the wall.

Deborah approaches her quilt tops as a painter approaches a canvas, using fiber reactive dyes, textile paints, stitching, collage, and found objects. She “focuses on abstract, organic shapes using surface treatments like dyeing and painting, creating dimension and movement using color and line.”

FIBER ARTS

menDocIno Art center’S

20 Mendocino Arts Magazine

JESSE ALLEN

N

July 23–26 Inventing a Universe

FINE ART

Deborah loves to teach and looks forward to helping students “find their design voice.” In Postcards from the Edge, students will create postcard sized art quilt studies using fabric remnants and found objects. Deborah promises a safe, fun environment, in which “there are no mistakes and learning is done in a positive, kind way – no pomposity! I try to help my students grow.” She plans a walking field trip to help her students to understand that the environment is full of design elements waiting to be discovered and incorporated into art quilts. With regards to her Free Form Piecing workshop, Deborah asks, “Would you love to make a functional, traditional quilt without lots of rules, measuring and a pattern? Take a leap and do something fun for yourself!”

Deborah also teaches a class on the business aspects of art, and addresses the question, “How do I make money with my art?”

JeSSe aLLeN describes himself as a “soul catcher.” “When I have the Beholder’s eye, I have . . . the window to the soul.” In a radical departure from most painters, he becomes the viewer, or the eye of the Beholder, as he paints. Jesse says, “I use

colour and design that draw my own eye and I apply them in a painting to reach the Beholder’s eye with my information. My images are dense with this information. The Beholder is the ever present companion in my every decision during the process.”

What the Beholder sees in a Jesse Allen painting is a stunning, vibrantly colorful, multi-layered, dream-like imagery that comes right out of Jesse’s unusual background. He was born and raised in Africa, a world of tropical jungles, wild animals, spectacular color, witch doc-tors and shamans. Many of his paintings are land or seascapes filled with fantastic plants and animals in brilliant colors (think Jackson Pollock meets Dr. Seuss). His paintings are full of African echoes and allusions to anthropology, biology, and everything in nature, but depicted as though from a shaman’s or soothsayer’s dream world. Jesse says, “I have had a series of experiences and visions in my psychic and working life similar to those associated with the most ancient traditions of shamanism. My paintings are seductive machines to lure you out of this world into a shamanic dream world. The images I make are of another world that reflects our world, that are associated with our world but not exactly of it.”

Well-educated in Africa and at Oxford, Jesse is nevertheless largely a self-taught artist. It was while teaching languages at Stanford, on a trip to Mendocino, that he experienced an epiphany and knew that he needed to quit academia to become a full time artist.

Jesse looks forward to teaching the process of painting to MAC’s students. He will provide a strategy for painting that will enable students “to express whatever they are trying to express, what-ever that may be.” Jesse’s goal is “to add a new arrow to the student’s quiver of techniques.”

Jesse works in watercolor, oil, gouache, and acrylic, and also does etching, silkscreen, litho-graph, and collage.

From barrister to beadmaker may seem like an unlikely career path to some, but to HarLaN SIMON, who sees the synchronicity and interconnectedness of everything in the world, it doesn’t seem odd at all. “Being a trial lawyer was a lot like trying to sell my jewelry. They’re both about the art of persuasion,” he says.

Harlan took metal and plastic shop classes in middle school, and jewelry making in high school. In college, he took a wide variety of classes, including math, science, sociology, languages, philosophy, history – piecing it all together to form a world view that influences and informs his work to this day as an artisanal glass and jewelry designer and maker. “When I am absorbed in glass work, I am aware of some of its history, the science behind it, the way fire and alchemy and experimentation have come together historically to allow us today to make beads, vessels,

HARLAN SIMON

N

August 21–24Flamework Glass Beadmaking

JEWELRY

Summer 2012 21

BRENT SUMNER

N

August 6–8Darjit Freeform Sculpture

August 25–26Flamework Special Topics/Guided Practice Sessions

JEWELRY

SCULPTURE

window glass, and microscope, camera, and telescope lenses. Glassmaking, from its early pyro-technological roots, to its role in semiconductors and the fiber optics of the information age, is a huge driver of social and technological development.” Indeed, Harlan maintains that whereas the bronze and iron ages have come and gone, the “Age of Glass,” begun nearly 4,500 years ago in Mesopotamia, is more pervasive and has even more impact today than at any other time in history. Even in terms of art, Harlan muses that the advent of lenses and mirrors may have played a significant role in the development of perspective and the flowering of the Renaissance.

When Harlan learned to make beads in the tradi-tional hand-spun flamework method, he “reconnected to an inner, early self, fully focused and joyful.” He expe-rienced a sort of ‘flow state’ and felt fully alive. Harlan says, “Making beads provides almost instant satisfaction. It reaffirms a person’s intrinsic abilities and a capacity for mastery. The essence of being human is creativity. In this regard, the ancient art form of flamework is a most magical and mesmerizing enabler.

Harlan says it is unfortunate that many students have a preconceived idea of flamework as intimidating and scary, but he considers it one of the most accessible hot glass techniques. “Flamework is also a very clean pursuit, and a person can make a bead in less than half an hour. Flamework is very intimate, hands on, in the now. Kind of like miniature scale tactile-visual music.” Harlan encourages his students to contemplate the way in which physics and western civi-lization come alive in this art form, and to further meditate upon the relationship between art and technique. He welcomes a classroom of thinkers (and doers) into his nurturing environment.

BreNt SuMNer’S workshop provides a unique opportunity to learn from the artist who actually developed the medium the class will be using – in this case, the sculptural material called Darjit.

Darjit is an architectural sculpting compound created several years ago by Brent in New Zealand. His motivation in developing Darjit was to recycle clay mine waste. It is a 95% recycled, non-toxic, natural blend of china clay, rock powder (a by-product of mining) and cellulose from recycled fiber. It can be used as a finish plaster for a Mediterranean style adobe look, and can be used to create sculpture, fireplaces, pillars, fountains, privacy walls, gates, planters, garden art, and interior walls. Tiles, mosaics, and all sorts of decorative items can be set into the Darjit while working it.

Brent is a committed recycler and environ-mentalist, and that was his primary motive in creating this versatile building material. An award winning sculptor/designer (he recently won a top award at the San Francisco Garden Show), he is now more interested in creating and allocating personal living space as opposed to sculpture as a purely artistic form. He envisions the day when a recycled material like Darjit will enable people to build small, soulful, personalized dwellings without incurring large construction costs and huge mortgages. Brent says, “I want to teach people how to beautify their surroundings with what we have generated as trash.” In his own structures, in addition to Darjit, he has incorporated everything from empty plastic bottles to recycled tires.

Students in this workshop will learn how to use Darjit as a free form sculptural material to create garden art. Brent will help each student with technique and with construction approaches, leading toward the completion of a unique sculpture which the student can take home.