One of seven courses available for the May 12 – 15, 2022 MCA Weekend Workshop @ Haystack
Repetition in Nature: An Enamel Workshop- FULL with WAITLIST
Instructor: Tanya Crane
Haystack Studio: Metals
Materials Fees: $25.00
Enrollment Limit: 10
Level: Beginner
Class Description:
Learn to use various approaches to repetitive mark-making in vitreous enamel using nature’s natural patterns as a guide. This class will introduce students to various techniques for replicating these patterns for enamel surfaces including stencils (both handmade and purchased), sgraffito, and pen work. Overglaze enamels and oils will allow for free mark making and painting abstract backgrounds and details. To finish your pieces, I will demonstrate various textured surface techniques that will transform your pieces into true abstract artforms.
Students will experiment and learn about the properties of Thompson’s medium expansion enamels as well as a variety of overglaze brands, firing temperatures, and nuances. Students will make test tiles and have the opportunity to make a finished pendant with a mosaic pattern of their choice. This workshop is open to all levels.
Materials students are required to bring:
– Rubber Tip Pens “Clay Shapers” Extra Firm Set (example)
– Pallet Knife, 3-4” flexible (example)
– Speedball Fine Point Dip Pen Holder, or other preferred nib and pen set (example)
– Variety of fine point nibs (example)
– Princeton 1/2 ” Snap! Stroke Brush (example)
– Fine Tip Brush
– Xacto Knife with preplacement blades or Olfa Knife
– Self-healing cutting matt
– Ceramic Tile (example) or pre-enameled (example) steel tile for mixing enamel paints on. Make sure it is glossy
– Copper Sheet- 24 Gauge 6×6″ and or 6×12″
– N95 Face Mask
– OptiVizors
About the Instructor-
Tanya Crane’s artwork dwells within a liminal existence between prejudice and privilege. Reared in a white middle-class suburb of Los Angeles, Crane’s experience with blackness was limited to visiting her father in South Central Los Angeles. Her dual existence has deeply informed her practice and has led to four distinct bodies of work, A Gathering of Instance, African and American, Seeing Through, and Polarity, Exposing the Tensity.
Crane received her MFA in Metalsmithing + Jewelry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015, and her BFA in Metal from the State University of New York at New Paltz. Currently, Crane is a Professor of the Practice in Metals at the School Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. She is the 2018 SNAG Emerging Artist selected to present at SOFA Chicago, the 2017 recipient of the Society of Arts and Crafts Artist Award, a Haystack Mountain School Artist Residency 2017 recipient, and a participant in the Smitten Forum Metalsmithing Residency at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico 2018. She exhibited her work in a solo exhibition, Tributaries: Polarity, Exposing the Tensity, at the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. Her work was recently acquired for the Museum of Fine Arts Boston collection and the Stewart Foundation for Modern Design in Montreal, CN.