In Motion: Using Text and Image in Artist’s Books

This workshop takes place across two sessions:

• Tues, Aug 31st, 6–8pm ET
• Wed, Sept 1st, 6–8pm ET

In this two day virtual workshop with artist, Ellen Sheffield, students will explore the categorization of text/image relationships. Exercises include responding to creative writing prompts and making images using primarily drawing/collage. Participants will experiment with and practice skills related to integrating pictures and words with book structures to communicate a narrative that words alone or only pictures could not express.

Required Materials:

• 3 x 5 notecards (a dozen)
• Sketchbook or 8″ x 10″ copy paper (two dozen sheets)
• Notebook + writing utensils
• Scissors
• UHU glue stick
• Old magazines and newspapers for collage
• 11″ x 17″ medium weight paper (2 sheets)

About the Instructor

Ellen Sheffield’s works on paper and artist’s books use text and image intersections to create unexpected readings. Her interest in the juxtaposition of visual language: materials; design; mark-making; and printing processes, with written language: essays: poetry; and hybrid writing, continues to motivate art/word collaborations with Lewis Hyde, Fanny Howe, and Andrew Grace among others. Recently Ellen’s work explores themes of race and class in her rural community informed by research of local African-American history by her husband, Ric Sheffield, Kenyon College Professor of Sociology. Ellen’s studio, Unit IV Arts, is located in Gambier, OH, where she teaches in Kenyon’s Art Department. Her artist’s books have been collected by the Beinecke Library, Yale Collection of American Literature at Yale University, by the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College and by many others.

All images courtesy of the instructor.