There were five participants for the June 25–27 Introductory to Letterpress workshop. Many good projects were conceived and completed in the weekend intensive. The next introductory class, taught by Jessica White, is August 27–29.

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June 12 & 13, 2010
Saturday: 9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Sunday: 1:00 – 5:00 pm

Gwen Diehn and Jacob Diehn
$123.00

Ask a friend, family member, child or adult and share a learning experience together. Learn how to find beautiful colored clays and turn them into art materials.  Gwen Diehn and Jacob Diehn will teach a workshop on Saturday, June 12 from 9 till 1 and Sunday, June 13, from 1 till 5 PM that will take you through all the steps of finding, cleaning, grinding, and storing clay pigments.  You can then use your pigments to make watercolors as well as opaque watercolors (gouache), and egg tempera; and you can also use these pigments to color handmade paper as well as to glaze ceramics using the terra sigillata technique.  We’ll spend Saturday digging clay at several sites in Swannanoa. We’ll come back to BookWorks mid-morning to begin the process of cleaning the pigments.  On Sunday we’ll take our cleaned pigments and turn them into watercolors by grinding them with a gum Arabic binder.  We’ll talk about other ways of processing the pigments to make different art supplies, depending on the interests of members of the class. Everyone will go home with a small set of watercolors as well as pigments to turn into other art supplies. This class is open to kids as well as adults as long as kids are accompanied by an adult.  A child-adult pair can take the class for the price of a single adult.

Supply list:  trowel or small shovel, plastic bags, clean, quart size clear glass or plastic containers, small containers such as daily pill reminder cases or empty mint tins to store watercolors in.

Wear old clothes!

June 7 – 11, 2010
Monday – Friday: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm (1-hour lunch break)

Instructor: Jean Buescher Bartlett
$445 + $35 materials fee

Since workshops are essentially collectives, we will take advantage of the possibilities for joint improvisation and serendipity, like jazz musicians jamming.  Students will be encouraged and guided to work in a freely associative and nonlinear fashion on a book (or books) firmly grounded in tradition.  Our approach will be from the inside out, beginning with contents and then developing structures around them.  Some of the techniques that we will investigate in this process-oriented class are: listing, free association writing, materials’ investigation, directed research, mirroring exercises, and book part deconstruction.

Please bring the following items:

• prismacolor white PC938 pencil
• mechanical pencil
• white eraser
• 6-18″ metal ruler
• 4-6″ plastic triangle
• glue brush
• exacto knife and extra blades
• small self-healing cutting mat
• small sharp scissors
• bone folders
• clay needle tool or slender pointed awl
• paper knife or letter opener
• thin or light weight collage materials: decorative and text papers, photos, old prints and drawings, etc.

June 3, 10, 17, 2010
Thursdays: 6:00 – 9:00 pm

Instructor: Andy Farkas
$116 + $25 materials fee

Learn the art and technique of wood engraving during this three-part workshop. Students will learn the proper way to use engraving tools, keep them sharp and the proper way to print the finished relief prints.  Tools and engraving blocks will be available for purchase.

June 4 – 6, 2010
Friday, Saturday & Sunday: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm (1 hour lunch break)

Instructor: Katherine McGinn and Frank Brannon
$323 (A $20 studio fee is included that covers all inks, solvents and other expendable supplies needed for printing and papermaking and contributes to the on-going upkeep of the presses, paper cutters and paper studio.)

The distinctive quality of handmade paper inspires many uses. In this course we will, not only make paper but print on it, exploring how handmade paper can be used in printmaking. You’ll learn techniques for forming sheets of handmade paper using pulp prepared in our Reina beater. After our paper has been made, we’ll move into the printmaking studio to make monoprints using the etching press. Monoprinting is a technique that produces unique prints in a variable series or single prints from plexiglass. This class will familiarize you with our new hand papermaking facility and the BookWorks printmaking studio.

Please bring the following items:

• For papermaking,  rubber-soled shoes and clothes you don’t mind getting wet.
• Sketch book, pencil, pen and eraser
• foam brush
• Sharpie marker
• Q-tips!!
• Viva Paper Towels or other soft paper towel