Past-workshops – MISSA 2023

Saturday July 16, 2022

Savage Sashiko Denim Mending

August 3: WEDNESDAY EVENING WORKSHOP, 7:00 – 9:30 pm

We all have a beloved pair of jeans or denim jacket — the ones with thread-bare spots from years of wear. Here is your chance to give your denim a new and improved life in this hands-on workshop exploring sashiko embroidery. Sashiko is a traditional Japanese embroidery style used for repairs and reinforcements while employing decorative design.

By practicing “mindfulness” through mending, we will create unique designs and patterns. Just bring your favorite denim pieces and be ready for fun!

Please bring an article or two of clothing to work with (jeans or other woven fabric, not knitted). Scissors, thread and Sashiko needles will be provided.

Monday June 6, 2022

Creative Photography & Social Content

We have all felt it. The feeling of wonder when you see the perfect image. We take out our cameras and phones and we snap away. Our eyes and brains excited with the real-life memory of the moment. Then, when we get home and check out the photos… they just never live up to what we remember.

Creative photography at its core is about changing the perspective of your images, in a way that is hard to visually experience in real life. It captures your moments in a way that enhances the experience and builds on your story that will last forever in the image.

This course will be the most fun you have ever had with a camera.

Learn to use your DSLR, mirrorless or mobile device cameras in ways that create unique and powerful images. Creative photography takes an exciting change of perspective to create. Whether you are a seasoned veteran photographer or are simply looking to make better social media content for your brand, this class will help you reframe the way you take photos.

Jared, a full-time creative photographer on TikTok and Instagram brings his creative photography experience to MISSA in an effort the teach a small and exclusive class of students the secrets of creative photography. Planning, building, and composing creative images will all be part of the fun in a 2-day workshop format. Hands-on and practical techniques will be demonstrated and practiced helping you bring home an amazing set of images and memories.

Monday May 16, 2022

Mark Making with Handmade Tools

To begin, students will be introduced to the art of making their own hand made brushes and mark making tools. Materials for the tools will come from things foraged in the wild* – forests, lanes, meadows, ocean shorelines or lakeside. Once the materials have been gathered, students will turn them into mark making tools using jute, string, linen thread, wool, wire, and anything else they choose.

Once students have created a selection of tools, they will begin to experiment with different kinds of gestural marks. Students will be shown a collection of hand made tools and given guidance about how to make their own tools. The instructor will demonstrate some mark making techniques using a variety of inks – sumi ink, india ink, walnut ink and acrylic ink. From there, students will experiment on their own. These unique marks can stand alone or, be used in conjunction with other art forms such as hand lettering, painting, or printmaking. Marks can be an effective way of conveying emotion in ways that conventional tools may not.

* IMPORTANT Care must be taken to not remove any wild botanical materials from protected areas, parks or land that is privately owned. Please respect the land and the plants that grow on it.

Thursday March 24, 2022

Birds of British Columbia in Oils

Day 1: Jean will briefly discuss materials and how to paint in oils without using solvents. She will show images of her favourite wildlife artists and images of her past work. There will be a discussion of source material and how to choose a compelling photographic pose, theme and composition. The class will prepare substrates with abstract washes of colour and then paint wet on wet the first layer of bird and habitat.

Day 2: You will apply a second and final layer of paint including areas of glaze. Paintings will be refined as much as the student desires. “Bling” will be added such as the glint in the eyes and shadows under feathers. Class discussion will include questions such as “Bird feet – painting the sweet spot between wimpy and horrifying” and “Expression – avoiding angry bird facial expressions”.

COVID – 19: As we have seen, the pandemic is constantly changing as are the health and safety precautions mandated by Health Canada. The MISSA Summer Program brings people together in classrooms, dining halls, accommodation rooms and other communal areas and we must ensure the protection and safety of all participants. All MISSA instructors are required to be fully vaccinated and, in order to ensure the safety of everyone on campus, we are asking that student participants also be fully vaccinated. Thank you for your cooperation.

Monday March 21, 2022

Millefiori Doodles in Polymer Clay

Millefiori is an ancient technique that can be described as a combination of sculpting and painting. This technique has been applied to many different types of media, such as: Glass, Ceramics, and Wood.

Wanda will share her years of experience as an artist in the technique of Millefiori using polymer clay. Polymer clay is a medium that allows for the mixing and blending of colours to create depth, variety and contrast.

You will learn to ‘doodle’ with black and white clay to create a variety of interesting patterned canes. We will take slices of these cane components to collage onto a glass vessel or mug. Finishing techniques will then be demonstrated.

Your materials fee includes the polymer clay you will need and a glass vessel.

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Sunday March 20, 2022

Painting Here and Now

Painting outdoors (or plein aire) was popularized in the mid 19th century with the advent of portable paint in tubes. It was the latest, most radical departure from the standard academic practices at the time as it sought to represent the realities of contemporary life in the industrialize West in contrast to ideals still perpetuated in the academies and the tastes of the status quo. Pleinarism in many ways was the foundation of modernist painting.

In the 21st century, confronted with myriad new realities, a return to pleinairism once again may prove to be a radical departure from the currents in contemporary art practice. In contrast to the speed and “connectedness” of the technological age, pleinairism asserts the sovereignty of our attention and situates the painter directly in the context of the painting.

If we think of looking as a tactile experience, feeling textures, sensing the space between things and painting as a tactile act of touching, observational painting becomes a kind of synesthetic and reciprocal conversation with place. Place and people have always shaped each other, nature and culture are inextricably linked and when we engage with place, we also engage with ourselves and our common history with the natural world, in this workshop we will explore the concept that painting serves this mutual agency.

This course is informed by current discourse in mindfulness, ecology, phenomenological philosophy and contemporary art. The course will feature an introductory lecture about painting outdoors, its history and precedents, philosophical and social implications in todays context. There will also be daily group critiques on the progress of work as well as individual feedback and instruction (when requested). The structure of the workshop will be a brief daily meeting and proceeding to the locations being painted and painting all day. Each member of the workshop including me will endeavour to make two to three paintings during the course of the week. The emphasis will be on painting as an interaction with place and objects over longer periods of time through different light and weather conditions.

Sunday March 20, 2022

Ceramic Plant Portraiture

This two day workshop will teach you to capture an essence of a plant in clay. Experiment with tile: cut, fold, stretch, squish, slap, scrape to get a desired and distinct botanical element.

Day 1: Consider your personal style and the attitudes, location and personally of your subject. Hand make leaves, sticks + flowers, but perhaps how you could not have imagined.

Day 2: Explore assemblage techniques including pre and post firing options. Work to curate composition by seeing many iterations with the same components.

This class will be focusing on wet clay work. You will have to take your work home to be fired.

Friday March 18, 2022

Figure Gestures

In this terracotta sculpture course students will do a deep dive into gesture – how to find emotion and meaning behind figurative poses. The slightest turn of a head, placement of a hand or downward glance can change the connotation of how a story is told. Students will explore historic meanings of gesture in art, ways of directing focus and challenging understanding. Students will be using a variety of hand-building techniques, using paper, and foam armatures.

The artist as story-teller through the figure.

NOTE: There will not be a firing for this workshop.

Friday March 18, 2022

Monotype: The Painterly Print

Join printmaker Heather Aston for a week of monotype printmaking. This unique process provides the artist with tools and materials that yield unparalleled results that are often innovative and surprising. Exploring watercolour, oil based etching inks, lift prints, chine collé and layered techniques you will progress through a series of steps, that will open new possibilities for expression.

Students will receive individual attention regarding drawing, painting and composition while ultimately pulling prints from a plexiglass matrix to paper using a manual press. The excitement of transformation and discovery is inherent in this media and is sure to inspire and fascinate participants. There will be discussion and class critiques throughout the week.

Friday March 18, 2022

Surface Design & Block Printing on Fabric

In this workshop Mo will guide you through the process of block-printing on fabric and surface design. We will begin with simple repeat patterns with one colour and then work our way to more complex and mutli-coloured patterns throughout the week. We will explore a variety of printmaking techniques from ombre rolls, three block prints, jigsaw prints and collagraphic techniques and how this can be applied to fabric.

Mo will teach you how to create off-set prints and how to register your stamps so your printed fabric has a professional look. Each day Mo will introduce a new design principal with a daily emphasis on you finding your own creative language.