Day 1 : A Mysterious Box
Friday, September 22

Morning:
Students will receive of box containing a collection of materials and found objects - each will be a little different.  Employing the remarkable creative power of constraint and with our theme in mind you will create a small work of art.  The only limit to this process is the time frame - 90 minutes. I’ll help you push past blocks and navigate and choose techniques and tools. For the remainder of the morning - fresh and awake from our experiments - we will explore materials and begin to define our individual projects and map out how those projects will work collectively.  

Afternoon:
In the afternoon we will begin creating our specimens.  

Day 2 : Question Everything
Saturday, September 23

Morning:
The entire day will be devoted to working on our individual projects - our contribution to this collection of imagined natural specimens.  I’ll guide you through techniques and processes - both traditional as well as non-traditional - for creating shapes and texture with textiles, wire, paper and other simple materials.  I’ll also offer you the thinking tools I use in my own creative process. The simplest thing – the smallest shift can guide you to new paths, new ideas and new places in your mind and shine a light on something that has been just out of reach in the shadows….. I am on a mission to shine a light into every one of those shadows.

Afternoon:
At mid-day we will review our progress as a group - pushing each other further, asking more questions and digging more deeply.

Day 3 : Tell the Story
Sunday, September 24

Morning:
In the morning we will finish or expand our individual projects and begin to plan documenting them as a collection.

Afternoon:
In the afternoon we will style and photograph our specimens individually and as a group.  I’ll share tips for creating compelling compositions and moods, simple lighting hacks and other seat of the pants photography techniques that I use in photographing my own work

Skill Level

This is not a sewing class - but - there will be sewing. If you have some skill in that area great, if not Ann only asks that you come with a willingness to start where you are and patience with yourself.  

Materials

I will bringing everything you need. The materials I work with are a huge part of my inspiration and process and I love sharing that. If there are tools or materials you would particularly like to work with please do bring them. 

About Ann

I live in Brooklyn New York near beautiful Prospect Park. I work with mostly found and salvaged materials many of them vintage or antique garments. I am interested in transformation: cardboard boxes from the fancy grocery store on my block become turreted castles and follies and windmills, and wretched and ruined old petticoats and gowns become roiling boiling seas for paper mache ships and boats. I enjoy using unassuming materials, cardboard, paper and other discarded things. The practicality appeals to me and I love the idea of giving the humblest and most common materials and tired, dispirited and faded things new importance and meaning. Searching for materials to work with is a big part of the joy in the process for me, I love the adventure of it, the happenstance and the surprises – a label with a name, an unexpected lining, some wonderful bit of an incongruous print perfectly preserved in the layers of a ruined 150 year old cuff or an odd and wonderful bit of mending – someone else’s hand. I particularly enjoy working with garments, there is a kind of affection and tenderness in the re-use and re-purposing of things that were once personal and perhaps treasured possessions. 

Contact

annwoodhandmade.com
instagram.com/annwood
info@annwoodhandmade.com