Merging Visions Workshop Series
June 13, July 11, and August 8
6:00-8:00 p.m.
Patterson-Appleton Arts Center
FREE
Join members of VAST and the Denton Poets’ Assembly to celebrate the Merging Visions exhibition through three workshops that unite visual and literary artistic expression.
June 13: Triple Your Fun: Poetry, Origami, and Gelli Printing
Make an origami crane, gelli print a book cover, and bind a small journal with Olivia Walker and Carol Rowley before Beth Honeycutt leads you in a poetic exploration of your experience to accompany your newly created works of art.
Olivia Walker
Olivia Walker has been interested in arts and crafts in every form since she was very young. After retiring from a career in commercial real estate, she was able to delve back into this favorite activity. Watercolor is her primary method of expression however she uses acrylics for abstract work and larger art pieces. Experimenting in both mediums with textures, colors and under paintings using a variety of subject matter – both objective and non-objective – gives Olivia great pleasure but sharing art activity is happiness for her too.
Beth Honeycutt
An award-winning poet and author, Beth Honeycutt intersperses story and active processes with verse in her latest book Echoes from the Stars. Studying connections of the heart, mind, body, and spirit from around the globe to provide fresh perspectives on our lives, Beth helps open our minds to fresh possibilities and prompts as we participate in origami art and Gelli Printing which can be used to house words from our hearts.
Beth lives with her musician husband in Denton. She has a local hypnosis and energy healing office, The Calming Center, while working as a family law paralegal, and loves to take every other found moment to write poetry and prose while their two dogs nap beside her.
Carol Rowley
Carol Rowley had a continuing interest in art as both a viewer in museums and a “person puttering about” in oil paints, crafts, and design. After retiring from a left-brain career in science and math, she happily pursued classes in right brain artistic creation primarily in watercolor painting.
Over the last 18 years, she has studied under three local artists and has taken watercolor and design art workshops both locally and out of state. She uses a variety of styles ranging from realism to abstraction to express her interpretation of a subject. She has done several greeting cards using the “Gelli Printing” method and enjoyed the freedom the medium provides. Carol also receives great joy in sharing art and artistic projects in a learning situation with other artists and those appreciative of art.
July 11: Creative Recycling: Torn Paper Collage
This hands-on workshop will begin by tearing things apart and end by putting them back together in new configurations. Participants will take home a frameable work of recycled watercolor art and a new poem created in a fun, fast, easy evening of paper, glue and play.
Nel Dorn Byrd AWS, NWS
Watercolor artist, Nel Dorn Byrd has painted with watercolors for forty-seven years. She also teaches, presents demos and serves as an art juror. Nel has studied in academic and private environments both at home and abroad, traveling and painting in twelve different countries. She has received numerous awards in national exhibitions and her work has been featured in national watercolor magazines and published in several books. She paints in an impressionistic style, preferring a painterly interpretation. A Denton County resident, Nel resides in the country near Aubrey & her studio overlooks the rolling countryside. You can discover more about Nel and her work at: www.neldornbyrd.com
Christine Irving
Christine Irving is first and foremost a storyteller. Her favorite métier is poetry, but her body of work also includes novels, memoir and travel writing. Christine is most interested in the strands of commonality that link one thing to another and thus to all things. Her life-long study of myth, fairy tales and symbolism helps discover such connections while enriching the images she creates with words. She is the author of five books of poetry. Her latest work, entitled Return to Inanna, is a mythopoeic exploration of the myth of Inanna and its relevance in the lives of contemporary women. Find out more about Christine and her books at: www.christineirving.com
Becca Hines
Becca Hines is a gatherer of stories usually related to nature and the processes mankind has utilized to change the world in which we live. Trained as a speech and language pathologist, her focus in working with children primarily has been centered on developing the language of young children. As a classroom teacher for over 20 years, Becca incorporated music and rhyme to facilitate students’ learning and to generate their interest in the natural world by developing many works for children between the kindergarten and second grade levels. Residing in Denton for over 40 years, she has come to enjoy the creativity of the poets in the Denton Poets’ Assembly and activities supported by the Visual Arts Society of Texas (VAST). A student of watercolor, she also explores other mediums of art and dedicates many hours to the promotion of the arts through VAST.
August 8: Representing Words with Marks, Found Poetry, and Concrete Poetry
Experience language in new ways. In this workshop, you will have the chance to interpret, redefine, and reform words through three different activities that will have you playing with gestural mark making, word searches, and linguistic arrangements.
Gail Williamson Cope
Gail Williamson Cope grew up an army brat spending her childhood in a different army base every year until her father retired when she was 11. This probably explains her wanderlust and curiosity about different peoples and their cultures. She has visited all 7 of the continents and incorporates many elements of her observations in her artwork. After completing college in 1968 with a B.A. in French and German and in 1976 receiving her MA in German she taught German, French, and European History for 32 years in Dallas. After retiring in 2001, she went back to school just to refresh her skills in art and ended up with an MA in art history and an MFA in painting, both from TWU. Her work ‘s purpose is to emphasize that an awareness of other cultures provides an insight into our own, as well as show that the culture surrounding us is not the only valid one. This understanding of our similarities and tolerance for our differences can only promote a more peaceful, harmonious and enlightened world. Gail is a member of the Visual Arts Society of Texas and participated in many of its exhibitions, as well as in other area art group exhibitions and regional exhibitions. Gail has owned part of an art gallery in the Turks and Caicos islands, and shown her work in exhibitions there as well as in Germany.
Robert Schinzel
Robert Schinzel grew up as a rolling stone, a gypsy nomad, moving frequently with his family when his father was transferred from job to job. Changes in locale gave Bob a close look at the world around him, at the differing viewpoints and values, the diverse cultures. After completing his MS in agriculture and geography, followed by a few years as soil scientist and wildland firefighter, he began a 33-year career in law enforcement, becoming a sergeant in a metropolitan police department and a federal agent and administrator with several U.S. agencies, including three years with the Panama Canal Commission. He began writing poetry after retirement, especially poems about nature and its close parallels to human behavior. Bob is a member of the Denton Poets Assembly. His poems have won numerous contests and appear in various publications. He won the Fort Worth Poetry Society’s William D. Barney Chapbook Contest in 2019 for his book – Westbound 380.
Beth Honeycutt
An award-winning poet and author, Beth Honeycutt intersperses story and active processes with verse in her latest book Echoes from the Stars. Studying connections of the heart, mind, body, and spirit from around the globe to provide fresh perspectives on our lives, Beth helps open our minds to fresh possibilities and prompts as we participate in origami art and Gelli Printing which can be used to house words from our hearts.
Beth lives with her musician husband in Denton. She has a local hypnosis and energy healing office, The Calming Center, while working as a family law paralegal, and loves to take every other found moment to write poetry and prose while their two dogs nap beside her.
