This two-week workshop is divided between two interrelated disciplines: papermaking and printmaking.
In the first week, renowned Italian American paper artist and educator, Roberto Mannino, will introduce the basics of hand papermaking.
In the first week, participants will learn how to create unique papers from virgin, high quality fibers like cotton, linen, and abaca. Color laminations, transparencies and pulp painting effects will support your creativity in composing sheets up to A3 size. Since these papers will be internally sized, they will be rewetted to better retain inks and embossing under the etching press.
In the second week, several alternative printmaking methods will be introduced, with the central focus of first developing imagery with paper as the substrate, then further printing over it:
Two single-day excursions through the amazing countryside of Central Italy will enrich this experience:
In week-one, we will visit the city of Fabriano. In the medieval city, we will visit the Fabriano Paper and Watermark Museum, which houses a working medieval papermaking press. We will also visit the nearby Civic Art Collection, Bruno Molajoli, and the Istocarta, with the impressive Fedrigoni Paper arkive hosted in the Historical Milani Papermill.
In week-two, we will visit Perugia to visit an important collection of medieval manuscripts at the Bibilioteca Augusta and then we will visit the extraordinary, National Museum of Umbria, for a tour of the collections.
Participants in the program will be housed in the remarkably well-preserved Umbrian hill town of Monte Castello di Vibio. Your workshop package is all-inclusive, providing welcome and departure services and airport transfer from the Rome Fiumicino, Leonardo Da Vinci Airport (FCO). Aboard our comfortable private bus, single occupancy accommodations with shared bath (a wide range of upgrades with private bath are available), 3 meals per day Monday-Thursday, Prosecco brunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday (no meals are served on Friday, our excursion day. Your workshop includes one excursion per week and many additional options are available on weekends for an additional fee. Of course, 24/7 access to facilities and 24/7 bi-lingual support are provided.
The ancient Umbrian hill town of Monte Castello di Vibio is the perfect place to discover the art of drypoint printmaking and learn to pull hand-wiped prints in this 2-week intaglio workshop with master printer Ian Jackson.
Intaglio (from the Italian ‘tagliare,’ meaning to carve or cut), is the term encompassing the multitude of printmaking techniques where a mark incised in a plate holds ink while the surface is wiped clean before printing. Drypoint is the most direct of these techniques, enabling artists to draw directly onto copper with sharp tools, raising ink-holding burrs that when delicately wiped and printed produce prints cherished for their uniquely soft-edged lines and velvety-rich tones.
Participants will learn the drypoint technique and the printing process and will have ample time to draw. The village offers no shortage of drawing inspiration from the dazzling Umbrian landscape to the medieval stone architecture, the still studio moments or the figures all around.
Excursions to Florence and to Deruta/Perugia will supplement the curriculum with tours of masterworks in collections of those cities. In Florence, the group will visit the print collection of the famed Uffizi Museum. Here, the new Study Center provides special access to our participants and allows them to view prints by some of the greatest masters of the medium. In Peruigia, te group will tour the collections of the National Gallery of Umbria and the Biblioteca Augusta for a special access tour of their medieval illuminated manuscripts and prints.
Through out their stay, participants will be housed in the remarkably well-preserved Umbrian hill town of Monte Castello di Vibio. Your workshop package is all-inclusive, providing welcome and departure services and airport transfer from the Rome Fiumicino, Leonardo Da Vinci Airport (FCO). Aboard our comfortable private bus, single occupancy accommodations with shared bath (a wide range of upgrades with private bath are available), 3 meals per day Monday-Thursday, Prosecco brunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday (no meals are served on Friday, our excursion day. Your workshop includes one excursion per week and many additional options are available on weekends for an additional fee. Of course, 24/7 access to facilities and 24/7 bi-lingual support are provided.
The workshop is suitable for artists and printmakers of all experience levels. All materials, except paper (available for purchase at the ICA Art Supply Store) will be provided.
Paper is an amazing material with the potential to be structurally strong or flexible and soft, opaque or translucent, a base for drawings and paintings,
a sculptural form or bound into books for writing and illustrations. In this session we will explore the potential of paper as a basic material and as a medium for artistic pursuits. This two-week session will be led by internationally known instructors Amanda Degener, founder of Cave Paper; Carol Barton of Popular Kinetics; Denise Carbone from the University of the Arts and Tom Balbo of Tom Balbo Galleries.
Students will be signing up for the complete session, with sixteen hours of instruction in each area: hand papermaking, pulp paper painting and marbling, sewn bookbindings, and designing pop-ups. The session will also include field trips to the Fabriano Paper Mill and to the city of Florence, along with several other excursion stops. In addition, Amanda will be offering optional morning Tai Chi sessions.
This is an ideal session for teachers, graphic designers, creative artists, and anyone who likes to play with paper. No prior experience is necessary; all skill levels are welcome.
Designing Pop-Ups by Carol Barton
Discover the creative magic of constructing your own pop-ups in this exciting workshop on “paper engineering.” We will begin with basic cut-and-fold pop-up structures that can be used to enhance graphics for greeting cards, invitations, gallery announcements, children’s picture books, and much more. From there we will explore a range of more complex glued structures which form the basis of entire scenes in contemporary pop-up books: props, floating platforms, spirals, straddles, and V-folds. You will be encouraged to invent and explore these structures to create your own artistic paper environments.
A Medley of Bookbindings by Denise Carbone
“A bookbinding has two main functions. It protects its text block against wear and tear, and, byits structure, it makes a book out of a heap of otherwise separate leaves or quires”.
-KAREN LIMPER-HERZ
What happens at the spine of a book effects its structure and action. A functioning book begins with a solid sewing. This class is open to everyone interested in the rudiments of how books are put together.
We will get acquainted with the materials and tools used to get started. This Class will cover a supported sewing, adhesive based structures, and album alternatives, paying attention to how materials and composition of the binding affects the book action. Introduction to basic hand tools of the trade will be covered. These books are meant to be constructed at the bench and made in a sparsely equipped home studio. We will learn about paper grain, folding, marking up and punching signatures, sewing on and off a sewing frame and gluing up and lining the spine.
A series of handouts will be provided outlining the steps to create the models made in class.
Structures include drum leaf hybrids, sewn paper case constructions & album alternatives. All will be covered in a variant of board constructions that are suitable for the books function and flexibility. It can be a challenge to find the right combination of materials to accommodate structure. You leave the workshop with the technical foundation and structural principles for continued investigation.
Hand Papermaking by Amanda Degener
Amanda will show you how to cook, process and form strong, translucent Asian-style sheets of paper and will also introduce you to natural dyeing and surface treatments on flax papers. The color palette of Cave Papers has often been compared to the earthy Italian palette. We will work with indigo, walnut and persimmon dyes and apply gelatin as a resist. Cave Papers are special because of the crackling, layering and combined effects resulting in dark, durable papers. Asian hand papermaking does not require much equipment, so it is easy to continue on your own. You will make both kozo and abaca paper, cloud paper, stencil “water away” paper, add inclusions, and try combinations of your own. You should bring a water-resistant apron or light raincoat along with waterproof footware to wear in class, or you can buy inexpensive waterproof shoes at
the local hardware store.
You will be introduced to suminagashi (Japanese marbling) which can be done on your handmade papers or on provided sheets. Each participant also will create a portfolio and/or sample book with descriptions of both Asian and Western papers, to keep as a reference. You will take home a huge stack of your own papers and be encouraged to use your papers in the other classes. The school has paper tubes for sale in order to take your work home.
Pulp Paper Painting and Marbling by Tom Balbo
In this session we will explore hand papermaking methods, both traditional and non-traditional, to produce pulp paintings. When using pre-colored pulp as a “paint,” it is best to form abase sheet of plain pulp and work on top of that. Students will use molds, deckles, and deckle boxes (basically screens and frames) in creating these base sheets out of cotton rag, abaca, and flax fibers. Then students will create their own colored paper images using finely crafted, pigmented cotton linter (short cotton-fiber pulp). Stencils, brushes, or squirt bottles can be employed in this process. Students will experiment with both spontaneous and controlled methods of production. We will also explore some experimental marbling techniques using commercial papers and some of our handmade sheets. Students will use acrylic paints for creating patterns, and more free-form designs will be achieved with the use of stencils. Experimentation will be greatly encouraged.
Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding, marrying the arts with mathematics to create some truly complex and stunning structures. This summer course will primarily focus on art, using mathematical techniques to design your own origami. For USAO students, this course counts as an Artistic Expression course.
For more information on mathematics role in origami, click here.
For more information, contact us.
Master Printer Ian Jackson leads a 2-week intaglio workshop at the International Center for the Arts.
Intaglio (from the Italian tagliare, meaning to carve or cut), is the term encompassing the multitude of printmaking techniques where a mark incised in a plate holds ink while the surface is wiped clean before printing.
Drawing directly into copper plates by raising a metal burr with sharp implements, participants will learn the exquisite craft of drypoint and produce hand-wiped prints of original drawings.
Drypoint is uniquely prized among artists and collectors for its velvety-rich line quality and sfumato-like tonality, achievable only through careful scraping and polishing.
Within the walls of the medieval village of Monte Castello di Vibio high above the countryside, artists will find no shortage of inspiration. One wakes up in the morning, takes a step from their doorway, and is immediately overcome by the impulse to draw everything within sight: hillsides dotted in olive groves smeared in dazzling Umbrian sunlight; thick stone architecture casting long shadows; a tranquil studio filled with diffuse natural light, waiting to be occupied.
Over the course of the 2-week workshop, participants will learn every step of the drypoint printing process while refining their own drawings through the frequent repetition of proofing, critiquing, and editing, culminating in the production of their own edition and a group show.
For more information, contact us.
Where we live, visit, and create can be a great source of inspiration. In this workshop we will view our surroundings with visitor’s eyes and make note of the details that appeal to us and draw us in. We will translate those details, from mundane to exceptional, (a window, archway, flower, fruit, bottle, hat, etc.) into simple repeatable images using stencils, block prints, and image transfers. You will learn surface design techniques including printing, stitching, mending, embroidery, collage, and dyeing and painting with local earth pigments, etc. Our richly layered papers and fabric will be made into books, scrolls, wall pieces, vessels, bags, and objects. Jody will teach students a number of bookmaking and paper structure techniques as well as how to construct items out of fabric including books, bags, pockets, vessels and other objects. By the end of the workshop each of us will have a different but cohesive collection of richly layered items communicating a sense of place that will be arranged into personal installations.
Field trips will serve as source material and inspiration gathering expeditions as well as personal enrichment. Trips will include visits to Florence and Rome.
For more information, contact us.
Working on heavy grade watercolor paper, using ink and watercolor, students will employ geometry, line, shape and form to create 2 non-objective paintings.
We will research designs and interpret them for our various individual projects during the second week. Please feel free to bring your design ideas and other inspirational materials to adapt as well.
As inspiration, we will be looking at historic designs found in art and architecture during our trips to both Florence and Rome.
We will be using a variety of techniques gained from studies in both European and Indian processes (including; color filling, line and design work, burnishing, washing, sanding and waxing),
Students will aim to create a harmonious balance from a mix of structure and improvisation by daily:
Meditation— finding thoughtless awareness through the use of affirmations, self awareness and inner peace.
Yoga— basic Hatha yoga practice allowing the student to slow down, tune into oneself and ones breathing and let the body guide you through simple movements such as Surya Namaskar.
Mindful observation 1— sit in silence drawing an object for three minutes, at the end of this time restart, drawing the same object again. 30 minutes.
Mindful observation 2— using the senses to raise awareness and explore imagination through the use of taste, touch and sound.
The course will be run with the help of Danish artist and assistant Emma Holm.
For more information, contact us.
