Saturday, February 19, 2022 10am to 4:30pm (snow date 2/26/22), with a 1/2 hour lunch break
Memory Transfer, with instructors Patricia Wheeler & Donna Gold, is a workshop in transforming family images and stories into art. Registration is required, maximum of 8 students. Please email Patricia Wheeler to register: patriciawheelerart@gmail.com.
This is the second class in the series Currents: Free Art Workshops held at the Reversing Falls Sanctuary, 818 Bagaduce Road, Brooksville, ME; held on Saturdays between January and June, supported by an Expansion Arts Grant from the Maine Community Foundation.
MEMORY TRANSFER
...transforming family images and stories into art
Photos of family members are multi-layered experiences that can evoke a rich confusion of memories and emotions. Sometimes, when we look at family photos, it’s not individuals we see, but the story of our lives. In this workshop, artist Patricia Wheeler works with writer and personal historian Donna Gold to guide you on a journey from image and memory to art and insight. You’ll begin with your stories, for we ask you to arrive with copies of family photos and places that hold a special meaning. You may also bring old garments, letters, or other documents. While Patricia demonstrates the transfer process using xerox copies of your own photos and documents, Donna will talk individually with participants to hear and record your connection to the photos you’ve brought. The final work emerges from your own story and process. It may take the form of a small book, or collage using domestic papers (coffee filters, brown lunch bags or wax paper envelopes) as well as high quality print papers; it can have no writing or be mostly writing.
Patricia Wheeler is a mixed media painter. She explores concepts of human interaction with place, inspired by ritual and symbolism. Working with acrylic paint and limestone clay, her paintings unfold in layers; a palimpsest of personal history, memory, and archetypal energies. She is represented by Cynthia Winings Gallery in Blue Hill, and has exhibited widely throughout the U.S. She has taught at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts; the Center for Maine Contemporary Art; Penland School of Crafts, Sitka Center for Art & Ecology; the Oregon College of Art & Crafts; and others.
Donna Gold, a writer, uses oral history to help families create memoirs. As a journalist for more than thirty years, she has written for the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, and Natural History magazines, and founded College of the Atlantic’s COA magazine. As an oral historian, she has collected life stories for the Smithsonian Archives, local libraries, and private clients, and created the volume, We Never Knew Any Different, Stockton Springs Stories of the Past Century.
Class size is limited to eight participants. All class participants and instructors must be fully vaccinated and wear KN95 masks which will be provided by RFS at the beginning of the session. We will be following CDC guidelines for physical distancing; the sanctuary also has a new air purifier that filters the air.
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