by Anne West


by Sandra Brownlee


by Anne West


by Sandra Brownlee

 

 

 

Sandra Brownlee & Anne West
Tactile Notebooks and the Written Word
 June 22-28

Course Description:
This workshop will be co-taught by Sandra Brownlee and Anne West who have enjoyed thirty years of artistic exchange. Together we will help you find your own living language through the creation of a vibrant notebook practice. Art and poetry emerge when we observe and listen closely to our own direct sensory experiences and then respond by means of visual forms and words to that which kindles our imagination. Each day, within the charged space of a “sense studio,” we will create tactile pages, playing with materials, techniques, and words as a way to make concrete the vital elements of our experience. At the end of the week, we will stitch together our pages to make our own books, creating a rich, personal, and vivid record of discoveries accumulated through images, words, and stories. It is our belief that this workshop experience and the book itself will heighten your sensory awareness and deepen an understanding of your unique vision.

Biography - Sandra Brownlee:
Sandra Brownlee earned her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia and her MFA in Fibers from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She has received numerous awards including a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Leeway Foundation Grant for Excellence in Fiber Art, A National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Grant and a Canada Council Grant. She has exhibited her work extensively in the USA and Canada in both solo and group exhibitions since the late 1970’s and has taught weaving and related textile arts at the college level for over 25 years. Sandra Brownlee currently resides in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia where she has a studio practice and also teaches part-time in the Textile department at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. In 2009 she will have a solo exhibition at the Mary Black Gallery in Halifax titled Sandra Brownlee: Notebooks, Textiles and Found Objects- A Celebration of Life.

Artist's Statement - Sandra Brownlee:
I am an avid notebook keeper and greatly appreciate how my notebook practice inspires and informs my work as a textile artist. Working in my notebooks has always been a vital part of my creative life. Since childhood, keeping a notebook has been my way of connecting to the physical world and making my inner world more tangible and vivid. There is both discipline and liberation in the commitment to document on a regular basis a moment, experience, thought or feeling. It is a process that is very grounding and allows me to become more trustful of my capacity to imagine, relate and transform. In recent years, my notebooks have increasingly become repositories of sensory delight containing tactile studies and playful inventions. Treasured objects that feel good to hold, these notebooks have inspired me to create autobiographical book works such as CLOTH BOOK, MY STORY as well as a large public textile commission permanently installed in Philadelphia titled GARDEN OF JOY. I am currently working towards an exhibition to be held at the Mary Black Gallery in Halifax, N.S. in 2009 titled Sandra Brownlee: Notebooks, Textiles and Found Objects- A Celebration of Life.

Supply List for participants to bring from home:

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