
Afternoon Artmaking at the Anderson Center with August Artists-in-Residence
Join artists-in-residence Isa Reyes, Azzah Sultan, Lily Jue Sheng, Camille Wanliss, and Rachel Collier for Afternoon Artmaking at the Anderson Center — a series of concurrent public art-making workshops, open studios, presentations, and artist demonstrations — on Saturday, August 20 from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. Taking place at the North Studios Courtyard, attendees will have the opportunity to meet the artists, learn about their equipment and techniques, or participate in workshops around Needle Felting, Zine-Making, Collage-Making, Historical Fiction, and Video Production. Rain plan is below.
Schedule and complete details for each artist and their activities are below. Drop-in visitors are welcome, but advance registration is encouraged for some activities. This is a free event.
1 p.m.– Zine-Making workshop with Isa Reyes
1 – 3 p.m.– Collage-Making workshop with Lily Jue Sheng
1 – 3 p.m. – Video Production open studio & activity with Azzah Sultan
2 p.m. – Video Mapping and Keying presentation with Azzah Sultan
2 – 4 p.m. – “Placing the Past: Creating Historical Fiction” workshop with Camille Wanliss
2 – 3 p.m. – Mixed-Media Fiber & Painting open studio with Rachel Collier
3 – 4 p.m. – “Painting with Wool” Needle Felting workshop with Rachel Collier
In the event of rain, outdoor workshops and activities with Camille, Lily and Isa will take place inside the Cafe adjacent to the barn. Activities happening with Rachel and Azzah will still take place inside the North Studios.
Zine Making Workshop with Isa Reyes
1 p.m. – North Studios Courtyard (rain site: Cafe)
Join composer, musician and multidisciplinary artist Isa Reyes at 1 p.m. on August 20 for a Zine-Making workshop in the North Studios Courtyard. Attendees will participate in activities and exercises that utilize multi-media techniques in order to create a zine centered on their individual inspirations. “As an artist sometimes it is easy for me to get caught up in a cycle not creating and being hard on myself about it,” shares Isa. “Zine-Making is a fun way to understand and empathize with others while also learning about what motivates people. Registration is encouraged, but not required — drop-in guests are welcome to participate.
New York–based artist Isa Reyes composes and performs music that blends R&B and indie pop to create a unique, atmospheric sound. Striving to reflect the places they’ve found home in, Isa makes music to connect, heal, and empower others, especially those who carry the weight of the past. Isa’s multidisciplinary practice is intertwined with my identity and an expression of the past, future, and present.
Collage-Making Workshop with Lily Jue Sheng
1 p.m. – 3 p.m. – North Studios Courtyard (rain site: Cafe)
Join film / media artist Lily Jue Sheng for a drop-in Collage workshop in the North Studios Courtyard from 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. on August 20. Participants will cut/black out images from miscellaneous found objects (magazines, books, papers, etc.) in order to patchwork and glue them into new arrangements. Lily will facilitate different exercises and offer prompts to encourage artistic improvisation and intention.
Collage making is a kind of automatic process, but at the same time, it also has politics. How can that process reorganize the terms of artistic permission or property? Is it possible to start using the backside of selected cutouts or images halfway into its making? At what point does the found or original image become something else entirely?
Lily Jue Sheng is an artist/filmmaker based in New York City whose collage work spans moving/still images and text. They consider collage a method that weaves material and social fabrics together in ways which deviate from proprietary meaning making. They are interested in renegotiating the terms of abstraction, authorship, and politics through their work.
Video Production open studio & Video Mapping and Keying presentation with Azzah Sultan
North Studios (indoor) – 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. – open studio; 2 p.m. – presentation
Go behind the scenes of digital video production during an open studio at 1 p.m. on August 20 with mixed-media visual artist Azzah Sultan. At the Anderson Center, Azzah is experimenting with projection mapping, chroma keying and digital distortion. Using archived family footage and textiles, her current work explores the fabrication of memory. She utilizes a graphic programming software called Isadora, which has an emphasis on real-time manipulation of digital video. At 2 p.m. Azzah will offer a presentation and activity demonstrating how she use video mapping and keying in her work.
Born in Abu Dhabi, Azzah Sultan is a Malaysian native who grew up in Malaysia, Saudi, Finland, Bahrain and has spent six years living in America working on her artistic practice. Based in New York City, Azzah’s artistic practice blends performance and mixed-media to investigate personal experiences and explore various aspects of childhood nostalgia, materials of memorabilia, and familial ties. Her work strives to transcend the fallacy that Muslim women are oppressed by the nature of their religious customs. Her work also speaks on the issues about navigating her identity through culture and immigration.
“Placing the Past: Creating Historical Fiction” workshop with Camille Wanliss
2 p.m. – 4 p.m. – North Studios Courtyard (rain site: Cafe)
Writing historical fiction – a literary genre where a story takes place in the past – can often feel daunting. How do you place your mark on a time period that’s already happened? In a drop-in workshop from 2 – 4p.m. on August 20 in the North Studios Courtyard, writer Camille Wanliss will analyze the political and cultural zeitgeist of 1960s Jamaica (the setting of her work-in-progress). Participants will read a brief excerpt from the work, discuss ways to develop historical fiction in an era of their own choosing, and create work based on this prompt. Registration is encouraged, but not required — drop-in guests are welcome to participate at any time.
Camille Wanliss is a New York City-based writer of Caribbean descent currently working on revising her manuscript for a historical novel set in 1962 Jamaica called AN ORNAMENT AND A DISGRACE. Much of her writing explores the impact of familial estrangement and inherited trauma through the lens of Afro-Caribbean identity. She crafts familiar stories about unfamiliar people; those who are often relegated to the margins of mainstream storytelling. Camille aims to create complex yet accurate portrayals of Caribbean identity while challenging the boundaries of Western culture, specifically through the decolonization of language.
Mixed-Media open studio and “Painting with Wool” Needle Felting workshop with Rachel Collier
North Studios (indoor) – 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. – open studio; 3 p.m. – workshop
Join interdisciplinary visual artist Rachel Collier for a “Painting with Wool” Needle Felting workshop at 3 p.m. on August 20. Space is limited and advance registration is strongly encouraged. Paintings can be painted with anything that leaves a mark. Learn how to use wool roving as an alternative to paint! Blend colors, draw lines and build textures using a felting needle as your brush and pre felted wool as your canvas. Discover ideas for how to put your felted piece to work as functional art. Leave with a finished painting! Rachel is also offering an open studio from 2 – 3 p.m. Learn more about her mixed media practice and how Rachel creates her distinctive abstract, textural wall rugs and paintings.
Based in Minneapolis, Rachel Collier utilizes the visual language of maps, topography, insets, picture-in-picture, scale and materiality, and radiant color to create abstract, large-scale, multidimensional paintings and wall rugs that evoke a sensation of calm buoyancy. Her work deftly navigates in-between spaces that point to a spectrum of possibility: the space between painting and sculpture, the space within a dialogue of opposing thoughts. She is motivated by joy, the boundless, the unfixed. In creating space via non-representation, Rachel’s work hints at worlds that are unknowable and indefinite.
This activity is made possible a grant from the Jerome Foundation, and the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Featured image at top: detail of work by (L to R): Isa Reyes, Lily Jue Sheng, Azzah Sultan, Rachel Collier, and Camille Wanliss.