Passages: A Visual Exploration of Personal History - Exploring Personal History through images culled from our personal archives (family, friends, etc). Re-visit and re-write the narrative from the perspective of Now.
Location: Sonoma Academy
Location: Outside on the veranda (with social distancing) at Sonoma Academy
Zoom introduction and one on one meetings before the workshop. (45 minutes)
Saturday, June 26 / 9:30-4:30
Sunday, June 27 / 9:30-4:30
$450 (supplies included) To sign up, send an email to Hillary at hillary.younglove@sonomaacademy.org
Have you ever wondered what to do with all of the ephemera (all the photos, letters, and other memorabilia) you have collected over the years? Instead of throwing it out or storing it away you can repurpose it and make a symbolic work of art.
This workshop is designed for individuals, friends and family members. Making a work of art together can be a bonding experience and a way to share your heritage and memories with the younger members of your family.
Here's a chance to take a creative workshop on the beautiful campus of Sonoma Academy, August 1st and 2nd.
More than any other moment in photographic history our lives are documented daily with photographs. Contained in the images is the very fiber of our lives and memories. They comprise our legacy. And yet we are unsure of how to pass them on for posterity.
How do we safeguard them from becoming obsolete? Printing all of them is not feasible. Organizing them takes time. And “sharing” on social media is a far cry from creating a lasting heirloom.
To find an artistic and long-lasting solution, this course looks to the age-old human desire to make things (objects, incisions, marks), which has existed since humans first started expressing their thoughts and emotions. As a way to generate initial models for this work, we’ll look at a variety of approaches by established artists for inspiration.
The process begins with selecting images from your personal collection and re-arranging these fragments of your life to create an artful, tactile piece. You are therefore encouraged to use images from your phone, old family photographs, letters, postcards, textiles, garments and journal entries. (We will scan precious pieces should you choose to keep the originals intact.) Then, we’ll layer and embed these items onto a surface, while incorporating paint, photo transfers and mark making to imbue your imagery with personal symbolic meaning.
By the end of the workshop, this process will have produced a unique and highly personal artifact that represents your conscious and often subconscious rewriting of events and people in your life. The result will be a personal tapestry of your process in which the past emerges and mixes with life’s experiences to create a tactile and layered piece of art, a lasting artifact condensed from your life journey. The objective is not to create an illustration of our life but to add richness and interpretation with the eyes of today - to give meaning or re-create narratives that we have of our own life in a mostly symbolic and intuitive manner.
The marks made by ancient cultures are still here today. Where will our digital marks and photos be in as little as 20 years?
No prior art experience necessary.
Hillary Younglove has been teaching all ages for over 20 years. After teaching alternative photography courses through the UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley Extension programs and The San Francisco Academy of Art University she became a founding instructor at Sonoma Academy where she developed the arts program, and now serves as head of the Art Department. She is adept at a variety of techniques and media. Her personal work spans from alternative photography to puppet making to fresco and encaustic painting. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Atlantic Records, Essence Magazine and more. Hillary has exhibited nationally and internationally. She has a BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design and an MA from NYU and studied at ICP.
Artifact-A Photo Tapestry/Textbook ( A book of work by students ages 14-19.)
Here are two books on the exhibit, Passages as well as a virtual tour of the show.