Art Materials from the Ground Up

Catalog description

Get your hands dirty with natural materials and rethink the role of science and natural history in art. Over the ten weeks of this class, we'll be making art - and our own art materials. Or, rather, we'll be borrowing them from the earth. Many of these are ancient practices: we'll make iron gall ink, lichen and plant dyes. We'll make yarn, weavings and paper from natural fibers. We'll forage and fire wild clay. We'll transform these old ways into new art works and, at the same time, transform our experience of art in the world from something that's stowed away in climate-controlled vaults and archives into something that's always changing and deeply connected to the living earth, as we all are.