Turning scraps into stories ...

 



Story Box: Creating Narrative with Relief Collage is happening at San Francisco Center for the Book next Saturday, April 16! We'll be making story boxes, shallow boxes with partitions that tell three-panel stories using 3-D collage (think Joseph Cornell!). Whether or not you're new to the book arts, if you're interested in boxmaking, visual narrative, sequential art, or collage, this workshop will be a lot of fun! Click HERE to register.

Build a Story Box at SFCB this April 16

This April 16, I'll be teaching Story Box: Creating Narrative with Relief Collage, a daylong workshop at San Francisco Center for the Book. In this workshop, we'll use bookboard to build a shallow box with three collaged compartments. Participants will receive instruction in 3D collage, layout, and sequence, and will leave with the fundamentals of building, covering, and dimensionally decorating a compartmented box. This will be a a lot of fun—learn more HERE!

Writing the Visual at Southwestern College

Writing the Visual | Story Box | Speculative Studio Archeology

I've posted three new workshop proposals on my website. They all engage with visual narrative, sequence, and collage as they incorporate elements of both creative writing and the book arts. They are adapted from classes I've taught at Mills College, the University of Iowa Center for the Book, and Iowa City Poetry's monthly Free Generative Writing Workshop. Click HERE to learn more!

Free Generative Writing Workshop this Sunday

I'm offering a prompt at June's Free Generative Writing Workshop this Sunday, June 21 at Public Space One in Iowa City. Hosted by Iowa City Poetry and Prompt Press, the monthly workshop brings together adult writers of all levels to create a supportive environment in which participants can generate new writing and meet others interested in the same. I've been doing some research about ways of combining text and image, contrasting 'solitary geniuses' like Lynda Barry and William Blake with historical, commercially-motivated, collaborative modes of creating and publishing stories—modes including medieval scriptoria and twentieth-century American mass-market comics publishers. The prompt I'm working on will include instructions to an imaginary illustrator! The workshop starts at 5:30 pm.

3 ways a contact lens, once lost, becomes a mask

I gave a workshop last week at Mills College on the art of sequential collage. We talked about visual themes, the narratives that form out of forced juxtaposition, and the similarities between typeset letterpress and collage (as well as the liberation that can stem from such material constraints). One student used the word collaboration—which I loved—when talking about the relationship between collage artists and their materials.

We also talked about the Kurt Schwitters exhibit currently at the Berkley Art Museum, and the inadvertent narratives that rise, even in work with nonsensical intention. I brought in my book Tarpaulin Kingdom, and we discussed the tactile nature of the book and the way it exists in a space between two-dimensional and sculptural art. We also talked about the exciting shift that can happen with the turn of a page.

We approached our assignment with this shift in mind, creating simple collaged trifolds with interlocking imagery, such as the one above.

For homework, I would encourage pondering the word manipulation while watching this video from Mark Leidner and keeping in mind the following quote from Lautreamont:

Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it.