The Joy of Making Friday Evening to Sunday Noon June 8 -10 2007
A Conference Exploring the Why & How of Making Things
at The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, Rhinebeck, NY updated 12/12/06
We are all makers. It is part of everyday life. We all make something: art, clothes, gardens, gifts, meals.
Once again, Daniel Mack hosts this fascinating weekend to explore the power of making things. He is joined by other practicing artists to create a memorable and inspiring weekend. We are introduced to classic construction techniques such as drilling, whittling, carving, sewing, stacking, assemblage, and lashing. We use these skills with wood, textiles, paper, stone, and other found and common materials to make things you can take home. As we create, we also seek to understand the why of making through discussion, poetry, and guided walks on the Omega campus. Making things with our hands, we learn, can be a way to see inside ourselves, a reflection of an inner longing for self-discovery and wholeness. The language of making is a sacred conversation with all of life—ourselves, others, and the natural world. This conference is for those in mid-career needing a fresh perspective, teachers looking to recharge themselves, and people who enjoy making things. Developing artists will find it a rich event of inspiration, information, technique, and networking. Healers should find it a stimulating intersection of the material and the spiritual. All the practicing artists are new for the 2007 Conference.
FR 6-7 Set-up a Gallery of Work for the Event… brought and made…
7:30-8:30 Intro by Daniel Mack Making Things Feeds The Four Needs for Wonder, Organic, Dexterity, Stories and Intros by artists
8:30-9:30 Activity1: Making your Mark Hypertufa and Masks by 4-5 artists
9:30-10:30 Fire at Lake
SA 9-10:30 Activity2: Books, Natural Materials, Rubbings,
10:30-12 Keynote: What we Know about the Mute Language of Objects
Response/discussion by artist panel and Audience
12-2 Lunch Break/ Woods Walk
2-3:30 Keynote: How Things Mean
3:30-5pm Activity3: Build Small Boats with Artists
5-7:30 Dinner Break
7:30-8:30 Panel Discussion: The Elements of Making
8:30 Float Boats--with tea candles-- into Lake
SU 9-11:30 Final Activity4 with Artists… Gift Making
11:30-noon Closing Comments and Discussion
Faculty: (confirmed)
Daniel Mack is a workshop leader, artist, and furniture maker whose books include Making Rustic Furniture, The Rustic Furniture Companion: Traditions, Techniques and Inspirations, and Log Cabin Living. He will be presenting materials from his new work-in-progress, The Wayward Artist, the development of ordinary creativity.
Paul Kane is a poet, poetry editor of Antipodes and professor of English at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY. He is an Emerson scholar and has published several books of poetry.
Marilyn Dale is a potter, painter and workshop leader from Warwick, NY
Renie Garlick, NJ artist, writer working in book forms & structures; author of To Stand Under A Yellow Tree Imagining
Judd Weisberg, artist, builder from Catskill Mountains. Collage, assemblage with natural materials, texture rubbings from nature; boat building, fly-tying.
In addition, there will be three artist assistants
References: Pablo Neruda Odes to Things, Susanne Stewart On Longing
Carla Needleman, The Work of Craft, E.M Dooling, A Way of Working
Leonard Koren, Wabi-sabi for Artists, designers, poets and philosophers.
Ann Cline's A Hut of One's Own: Life Outsode the circle of architecture
the poetry of Mary Oliver and Sharon Olds
Websites: www.danielmack.com, www.toreveal.com,
2006 Artists: www.jonathantalbot.com, www.dianesavona.com,