WorkshopsCritical DevelopmentVisual Poetry and Artists’ Books (Spring 2024)

Visual Poetry and Artists’ Books (Spring 2024)

This virtual workshop takes place on Zoom from April 2–16, 2024 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

Complete Schedule: 

  • Tuesday, April 2, 6:00 – 8:00pm
  • Tuesday, April 9, 6:00 – 8:00pm
  • Tuesday, April 16, 6:00 – 8:00pm

Please Note: Registration for this workshop closes on March 26th, at 11:59 pm.

About the Workshop:

This virtual workshop is taught by CBA instructor Ellen Sheffield.
 
Visual poetry incorporates multiple forms of experimental poetry and literature. It has been described as the natural fusion of poetry and visual art and one might trace its beginnings to concrete poetry.
 
This workshop will teach students a variety of skills, such as creative writing techniques, moving text across multiple pages, and incorporating visual elements of scale, line, shape, and patten in typographic compositions. Through prompts, exercises and homework assignments participants will explore and experiment with creating visual poetry and make a soft cover sampler book with a chain stitched binding as a guide for future book projects. This is an intermediate level workshop; it is helpful if participants have some experience making artist’s books.
 

Required Materials:

Materials:

  • 8 sheets 8.5″ x 11″ text weight paper
  • 1 sheet 8.5″ x 11″ cover weight paper
  • A dozen 3″ x 5″ notecards

Tools:

  • Scissors
  • Bone folder
  • Binding needle
  • 48″ linen thread
  • Awl
  • 4 paperclips
  • Pens, pencils, markers
  • Sketchbook or journal for note-taking

About Ellen Sheffield

Ellen Sheffield is a visual artist, poet and teacher based in Gambier, Ohio and Point Richmond, California. Her works on paper and artist’s books play with image and text intersections to create unexpected readings. Collaborations with poets, experiments with found text and working with visual scores are some of the ways she engages with themes of race, place, memory and language perception. She is an Emeriti Instructor of Art having taught Book Arts and related courses at Kenyon College’s Art Department and she continues to teach virtual workshops for arts centers around the country. Her artist’s books have been collected by the Beinecke Library Yale University, Scripps College, Rhode Island School of Design, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art and others.

All images courtesy of the instructor.

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Free

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