Mapping the Amalfi Coast by Brush and Fold in Clay and in Paper

This nine-day workshop is open to explorers, artists and students of art of any level, world travellers, and guests alike.

This hybrid workshop will feature hands-on experiences in ceramic glaze painting on tiles or plates and hand-made artists books, woven together by a love of the Italian ceramics tradition known as maiolica.

We will travel to numerous sublime and mythically beautiful sites to sketch, wander, explore, photograph, and gather inspiration from the landscape, the historic architecture, fabulous culture, and the rich craft traditions found uniquely integrated into the built environment along the Amalfi Coast.

We will focus our lens upon the ceramic genre known as maiolica, a type of tin-glazed earthenware with brightly colored surfaces and a rich history dating back centuries in the area. Beginning with the appreciation of maiolica tile patterns we will explore symmetrical patterns, tessellating patterns, and circular mandala designs, by drawing in our sketchbooks,

This will be in preparation for the 3-day ceramic glaze painting component of this workshop, painting on ceramic plates and tiles, ideally to be held in one of our partnering local ceramics studios. In addition, we will explore dozens of ceramic galleries and studios along the way.

In the book arts component of this workshop, students will learn to create basic accordion artists books in a variety of papers and sizes, to take along with us as we begin our journey mapping the sites of the coast. We will utilize a wide variety of mediums to complete our imagery gleaned from our travels including multiple drawing mediums, watercolor, gauche, colored pencils, photo-collage, paper-mosaic and more.

These hand-made accordion books will provide the perfect substrates for mapping our Amalfi Coast experiences, culminating in an elaborate diamond fold accordion book, which will hold all of the various mapping elements gleaned from our travels in a visually richly layered mosaic of a document, mirroring the beautiful experiences we have created during our time on the Amalfi Coast.