Summer Art Workshops in June at WCSU to offer creative arts instruction to public

WCSU faculty in visual arts to offer Summer Art Workshops      

Four professional artists and adjunct professors at Western Connecticut State University will provide instruction in diverse creative fields ranging from painting and printmaking to photography and bookmaking in the Summer Art Workshop program during June at the Visual and Performing Arts Center on the university’s Westside campus, 43 Lake Ave. Extension in Danbury.

Artists featured as workshop instructors will include Riley Brewster, a painter with extensive experience in drawing and printmaking; Christine Hartman, a painter whose art reflects traditional figurative technique with an appreciation of modern esthetics; Ken Scaglia, a graphic design specialist with extensive experience in bookmaking and publications as well as decorative art and murals; and Elyse Shapiro, a commercial photographer and photography instructor with past experience as a photojournalist. All Summer Art Workshops, presented by the WCSU Department of Art, are open to the public for online enrollment through May 27 at http://wcsuvpac.eventbrite.com.

Brewster will hold two workshops offered Mondays and Wednesdays from June 6 through 29, at an enrollment fee of $350 for each workshop or $625 for the two workshops as a unit. “Drawing from Nature,” from 9:30 a.m. to noon in VPAC Room 241, will provide guidance for students to create their own drawings at a selected natural location. “Etching without Acid,” from 1:30 to 4 p.m. at the VPAC third-floor M.F.A. area, will invite students to interpret form and space in nature through the more layered and indirect methods of monoprint and drypoint printing.

Hartman will provide painting instruction in successive two-week sessions, at an enrollment fee of $200 for each workshop or $350 for the two workshops as a unit. Both sessions will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in VPAC Room 244. “Painting Workshop I,” from June 2 through 14, will provide an opportunity for both beginning and experienced painters to explore the process of expressing light with paint in a studio setting, culminating in the creation of a complete painting. “Painting Workshop II,” from June 16 through 28, will include study in drawing of facial anatomy and two sessions of artistic work in any color medium to draw facial perspectives of a live model, in preparation for the creation of a full portrait.

Scaglia will conduct a four-week workshop, “Bookmaking and Letterpress,” at an enrollment fee of $350. The workshop will be offered from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays from June 7 through 30 in VPAC Room 151. The introductory course will explore various processes of bookmaking, leading students through a series of hands-on projects in techniques including stitched bindings, accordion folding, and manuscript and hinged cases. The letterpress section of the course will familiarize students with basic tools and materials required to set and lock up type, prepare a printing press and perform press cleanup.

Shapiro will teach a two-week workshop, “Basic Digital Photography,” at an enrollment fee of $350. The workshop will be held from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays from June 2 through 14 in VPAC Room 343. The course will introduce students to technical aspects of digital camera operation as a foundation for creative use of the camera in photography, as well as tools for download, organization and editing of digital images and for darkroom creation of photograms.    

The Summer Art Workshops will bring together a wide breadth of creative experience shared by the instructors featured in the program. Brewster, who earned his M.F.A. in Painting at Yale University, has taught at the New York Studio School, the University of Washington, and Dartmouth, Bowdoin and Hampshire colleges, and has exhibited his works widely throughout the United States. Hartman, who received her M.F.A. at Brooklyn College and pursued studies at the Parsons School of Design, is a member of the Zeuxis group of still-life painters and has exhibited at many galleries in New York and Connecticut. Scaglia, who earned his master’s degree in graphic design from the Yale University School of Art, worked extensively in book and publication design for major publishers of art collections and currently teaches graphic design history and typography at WCSU and Norwalk Community College. Shapiro worked for 17 years as a photojournalist for the Westport News and affiliated newspapers of the Brooks Community News group, and for the past two decades has pursued commercial photography and served as a photography instructor at WCSU and the Silvermine Guild in Norwalk.

For additional information about workshop registrations, course descriptions and lists of required art supplies, contact Visual Arts Assistant Lori Robeau at the WCSU Department of Art at robeaul@wcsu.edu

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Submitted by Danbury, CT

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