Marks – Building a Vocabulary Online Class Apr 14

Marks – Building a Vocabulary Online Class
Sunday, April 14, 1-4pm MT
Instructor: Janet Strickler
Limit: 15 students. Includes class kit + shipping
To receive your kit in time for class, register by April 7. All participants must be 15 years or older.

Class Details:

Making marks – humans have been doing it for at least 70,000 years. It’s one of the most fundamental forms of creative expression. Simple individual marks can, when varied in shape and repeated in patterns, create complex designs. We think this class with local artist Janet Strickler will stretch your idea of what can be done with a few simple lines. To start you out, she provides a set of quick exercises focusing on one type of mark at a time. Janet thinks of these individual marks as building blocks that lead to a rich vocabulary in mark making. It’s just like learning to read. Once you know the words you can build your own stories. 

Most of the class is devoted to work time, interspersed with some group sharing. Seeing how people with the same prompts and materials make completely unique art is one of the best parts of the class. Join Janet for a few hours of playful experimentation with pen and paper! You don’t have to be an artist for her class, though artists can have fun with it, too.

This online class will be recorded and made available to class participants for 10 days after the class.

Class Materials

Please bring the following materials:

• No special materials required, though Janet encourages you to have your own favorite art materials handy. Anything that makes marks is fair game! 
  
• Optional: favorite pens or markers
• Optional: colored pencils can be interesting, especially if they’re good enough quality to make a nice smooth solid line
• Optional: crayons - fun because you can watercolor over them and have something that looks like batik
• Optional: your own papers. Nothing special needed unless your mark-making medium (pastels, for example) requires it. Janet uses plain white printer paper all the time.
• Optional: your own watercolor backgrounds

Janet suggests avoiding anything that smears easily, though she confesses she’s used pieces of charcoal left in the bottom of the wood-burning stove. She says It was gloriously messy and fun!

Class Kit Includes: 

• A ring of small cards with prompts and sample marks.
  
• Various kinds of plain paper to use and experiment with
• An ultra fine point Sharpie
• A white Jelly Roll pen

We ship class kits approximately 2 weeks before the class via USPS Priority Mail. You will receive a tracking number (check your spam folder) once your kit ships. Kits can only be shipped within the USA. If you’re outside the USA and would like to take the class, please contact us for information.

Zoom Info

Be sure to look for an email with class details sent out the Monday before the class. Classes with homework may receive pre-class info earlier. The email includes a Zoom link to login, the class agenda, a materials list, and information on any pre-class prep. Please be prepared to rsvp to the info email so we know you are set for class. If you don’t see the class email from us check your spam folder. No email? Double check the email address you entered when you registered. It's on your order confirmation. If there's still an issue, contact twohandsclasses@gmail.com

Class Refund/Cancellation Policy

For cancellation made 3 weeks before class we can either issue a refund or apply the funds to another class. We deduct the price of the class kit plus shipping if we’ve already shipped the kit, and we retain a $10 processing fee for EACH class cancelled. If you cancel fewer than 3 weeks before the class there is no refund or credit. If Two Hands Paperie cancels a class, we’ll contact you by email and refund the FULL class fee.

Instructor Bio

Janet Strickler, a mixed media artist living and working in Colorado, calls her work Art of the Ordinary. In truth, there’s nothing ordinary about what she creates. What is ordinary is what she uses: recycled and reclaimed objects, construction leftovers, discarded magazines, candle stubs, coffee grounds, natural materials, and even old paper clips. She loves to explore different media and will attempt to make art out of nearly anything. You can often find her in the Art Parts Creative Reuse store in Boulder, softly exclaiming to herself, “I could make art out of that!”. She enjoys the challenge of turning ordinary materials and cast-off items into objects of beauty.

Much of Janet’s work involves a spiritual element. It’s no surprise, given that the goal of her own art making is to create a beautiful, harmonious, and peaceful environment. Woven throughout her work is a deep love for geometry and pattern. She’s made a lifetime study of art history around the world and has been influenced by works as diverse as ancient manuscripts, medieval architecture, American quilts, Australian aboriginal paintings, Byzantine mosaics, and the decorative traditions of India and the Middle East. Their patterns are a starting point and don’t necessarily result in a predetermined layout. For her, art making is about beginning and then finding out where the piece leads.

True to her personal approach to art, Janet’s classes are fundamentally about exploring and experimenting. Rather than teaching students how to make a particular piece of art, she likes to demonstrate what can be done with a set of materials and then turn students loose to play with them. It’s both astonishing and instructive to see how different the results can be. Classes with her are delightful adventures in discovering the unexpected! Learn more on her website: artoftheordinary.net