Previous Spring Sacred Arts Classes
May 7 – 13, 2023
Soul Collage® with Laurie Rudel
Through the use of images from magazines, calendars, and personal images, the simple process of SoulCollage® offers us an opportunity to explore the many and varied aspects of our inner lives as well as acknowledge and honor our larger communities of family and friends. Over the course of our week together we will begin to create a “deck” of 5 x 8-inch SoulCollage® Cards that can be used for meditation, prayer, and reflection.
In Conversation: Organics & Geometrics with Scott Burnett
Whether we are mindful of it or not, composition is elemental to art-making. This holds true across genres: composition is as essential to abstraction as it is to realism. It is elemental to many other things as well! But our class will focus on acrylic mixed-media art-making. In particular, we will explore the interplay of organic and geometric lines and shapes. And as we play, we will start to acquire a better sense of what delights us, compositionally.
Mosaic as Fabric Art with Larkin Van Horn
Is it mosaic? Or is it stained glass? Nope! It’s fabric collage. Come explore a fun and accessible process for bringing your designs to life. We’ll play with color, line and space, and lots of pins! Learn how to work with fusible web and foam core as design tools on your way to a beautiful piece of wall art. Students can choose to bring a sewing machine and complete one piece so it’s ready to hang. Or leave the sewing machine at home and start several designs to be completed later.
May 1 – 7, 2022
Holy Ground, Creation’s Prayer
Unlikely Balances: Playing with Composition in Acrylics with Scott Burnett
Balance feels good to us – maybe because it lets us rest from expecting the inevitable return of disequilibrium. But there’s something especially delightful about balances that seem impossible. When disorder should be prevailing but it isn’t, we smile.This class is a chance to explore the wild edges of your personal sense of compositional balance.
Contemplative Writing: Poetry, Presence, and Prayer with Mollie Taylor
In these isolating, uncertain, and anxious days, spaces in which we can gather in community to intentionally quiet our minds, slow our breaths, and receive the gift of each other’s presence are few. In this class, we will explore contemplative practices in community as entries into presence and the creative writing process. We will listen for the words that already reside deep within us and all around us, and we will graciously give voice to what we hear.
Fabric Shrines for the Personal Altar with Larkin Van Horn
A shrine is created to memorialize or commemorate a person, place, or event. It can provide a place of focus on a personal altar, and an inspiration for prayer. In this class we will create three basic shrine shapes, with a view to exploring the design and construction methods, as well as discussing the place of an altar in the home.
Head, Heart, and Hands: Mixed Media Sketchbook Journaling with Laurie Rudel
In this class the pages of our sketchbooks will become places for us to explore a number of varied art supplies and techniques. This class can be a springboard to begin or enhance your sketchbook/journaling practice. Rob Ryan observes, “I thought about it in my head and felt it in my heart but I made it with my hands.” During class we will explore how our own particular head, heart and hands can use paint, collage, drawing and mark-making, stencils and stamping to add depth and meaning to our sketchbook pages.
April 25 – May 1, 2021
Journey – Covering Ground
Unlikely Balances: Playing with Composition in Acrylics with Scott Burnett
Balance feels good to us – maybe because it lets us rest from expecting the inevitable return of disequilibrium. But there’s something especially delightful about balances that seem impossible. When disorder should be prevailing but it isn’t, we smile.This class is a chance to explore the wild edges of your personal sense of compositional balance.
Transforming Visions: Finding Words for What We See with Brian Johnson
This class will draw on the writing practice of ekphrasis, which involves a close and meditative “reading” of an art work, and then participants will express new visions in description, free verse, journaling, essay, poetry and prose. Art speaks to us and this class will give us help in speaking and writing imaginatively about art.
SoulCollage®: Intuitive Art and Self Discovery with Laurie Rudel
Using glue, scissors, found images, your own photographs, and pre-cut mat board we’ll begin or continue to create a “deck” of SoulCollage® cards. The SoulCollage® process can be used as a tool for reflection and meditation. We’ll share practical and imaginative ways to help us make room in our hearts for self discovery.