May 2 - May 16  Morning

POETRY WORKSHOP: Finding Art in the Lines

We step into poems the way we step into the fascinating structures we admire: curious, but from the outside. What lures us into the delicate, vivid, and sometimes puzzling rooms of a memorable poem? Elaine Sexton’s prompts and provocations, lessons and handouts, are designed to inspire writers from all disciplines and levels of experience to learn new ways to draw our ideas from our imagination and put them into words. Students will learn how to find and use the often “invisible” structures great poetry is built on, and try out as many new strategies to get their words on the page as days we spend together. Each lesson offers a way to help us respond, uniquely, to what we see and experience. Every day is a site-specific expedition: in class, en plein-art––on a road trip, the nearby villages, in the local caves and cathedrals. We will take full advantage of this unique and stunning setting to read, write, think, and observe together.

Day long excursions to Paris and Vezelay are included in the class.

May 2 - May 16   Afternoon

Ro Lohin conducts this intensive drawing class in the environs of the commune of Mailly-le-Chateau, located in the countryside  of the Burgundy region of the France. Using models in natural settings, the class explores the dynamics of human figures in plein air. Drawings sessions take place on the Chateau grounds and its surrounds; consisting of rivers, canals, limestone cliffs, forests and charming medieval villages. The class also offers day trips to museums in Paris, and the nearby historically important town of Vézeley.  During these excursions  students draw from life as well as masterworks visited in museums, galleries and cathedrals.

May 2 - May 16   Morning

Renowned artist and teacher Stanley Lewis will conduct Plein Air Painting sessions in the stunning Burgundy countryside surrounding the commune of Mailly-le-Château. Daily outdoor on-site sessions and instruction are followed by critique and discussion in the studio. Students live in the magnificent Chateau de Mailly, dating back to the 13th century. Here is a chance to study with this artist/educator who has influenced generations of artists. 

May 17-May 31   Morning

Set within the historic grounds and surrounding countryside of Château de Mailly, Color Fields will explore how landscape can serve as a point of departure for abstraction. The Yonne River valley features winding waterways, limestone cliffs, and rolling fields. Participants will investigate how color, light, atmosphere, rhythm, and memory can become the foundation for paintings that move beyond direct observation, transforming and distilling the experience of place. Exploring the material and expressive qualities of paint, artists will experiment with color, composition, gesture, and spatial relationships while cultivating a personal abstract visual language. Based in studio work, outdoor painting, discussions and individual critiques, the workshop will also include excursions to Paris and nearby historic sites and culminate in an exhibition on site.

May 17 - May 31  Afternoon

Processing Pattern

Set in the Burgundy region, this workshop will explore processes for generating organic, geometric and image based pattern for ceramic objects. An excursion to Paris, and day trips to see colorful patterned terra cotta roofs around Burgundy, as well as visits to Gothic cathedrals with their ornate stained-glass and decoration will serve as inspiration as individuals develop their own projects using both wet clay and bisque tile. Methods for transferring tessellations and imagery to tile will be explored, along with ways of layering slips and glazes to achieve fired surfaces exploring symmetries, depth, color and ideas. 

May 30 - June 13  Mornings

We’ll make lots of clay figures—heads and figures. We’ll draw a bit too, trying to keep our work in clay connected to the drawing and painting that’s been done in Italy for millennia. We will visit Florence- where Renaissance sculptors spent time thinking about Roman classical sculpture, and their relationship to it. We will think about the connections between the physical acts of drawing, painting and making sculpture and abstract ideas—between looking at a figure and seeing not just anatomy, but form and space too—and not just balance, movement and proportion—metaphysical “things” too. Italy can be a kind of dreamy place. Art itself can seem dreamy. We’ll try to keep things undreamy/“real.” We’ll be working hard, sweating. We’ll play too. Quick sketches, more sustained things. We won’t be trying to make masterpieces. We’ll just be trying to keep our eyes open, trying to see the model, trying to see what we’re making.

May 30 - June 13   Morning

This workshop/residency invites artists to engage with the ordinary - objects, gestures, spaces, routines - as a catalyst for artistic exploration. Participants will cultivate sensitivity to the overlooked, habitual, and intimate to deepen their engagement with the everyday and create new ways forward in their practice. The two-week workshop/residency will begin with an informal virtual meeting to introduce each artist's practice and spark critical discussion. This virtual session fosters community and lays the groundwork for future site-based inquiries. The two-week intensive workshop/residency is centered in the Umbrian Hill town of Monte Castello di Vibio. Immersed in place, artists will visit museums and cultural sites in the region to engage with and experience historic visions of the everyday while creating works that build on and reflect their practices and experiences. The workshop will culminate in an exhibition. Throughout the workshop/residency, select readings (from poetry to cultural philosophy and memoir) will serve as a thread, helping artists expand their practice and deepen their engagement with observation and the everyday. The workshop is ideal for artists working across disciplines and media who aim to enhance their practice through slowness, observation, and reflection.

May 30 - June 13   Morning

This painting workshop will focus on working between observation and invention to explore color and the symbolic potential of the landscape. The landscape has long offered artists a space for reflection, serving as both a physical and psychological terrain. We will use the Italian landscape as a point of departure to investigate how symbolic narratives emerge through perception and imagination. Working both outdoors and in the studio, students will move between direct observation and invention, using painting, drawing and collage to translate experience. Slide lectures will complement the class as we explore how color, space and symbols can expand our understanding of place and individual perspective.

 

June 13- June 27   Morning

The Umbria Mentoring Program is led by two painters, Dusseldorf-based Jutta Haeckel and New York-based Kevin Wixted.  The Program runs for a four-week period, and includes both cohort and individual meetings. The first two weeks are conducted online by Zoom, and consist of critique, readings and conversation. The final two weeks take place in the studios at Monte Castello di Vibio, where you meet and work with your cohort members and faculty. Each artist has a private studio, and participates in weekly individual and group critiques. Research excursions to important museums, churches and galleries occur weekly. Here you will build a lasting community of colleagues while experiencing great Italian art and culture. The course culminates with a group exhibition. 

Finding Simplicity and Complexity in the Umbrian Landscape with Cathy Lebowitz

June 13 - June 27  Afternoons

This session will focus on drawing both outdoors and in the studio, using direct observation of our surroundings as a point of departure for sustained investigation. We will draw on site and return to the studio to develop our observations in a variety of mediums. The stunning hilltop town of Monte Castello di Vibio offers unique opportunities for studying composition, abstraction, color, and shifting spatial relationships. Group discussions and critiques will be an integral part of the session, providing opportunities to consider individual approaches, exchange ideas, and reflect on how a drawing changes over time. Students are encouraged to work across a range of materials, including pencil, collage, watercolor, and gouache. The changes in medium will support approaches ranging from observational sketches to more layered and constructed work. Throughout the session, drawing will be understood not simply as a record of what is seen, but as a flexible process for discovering structure, simplifying or complicating an image, and developing a personal response to place.

June 13 - June 27  Afternoon 

Monotype literally means “one of a kind” and refers to printmaking techniques where an artist paints directly onto a plate, which is then printed on paper. The result is a unique print of the image, which can be manipulated but never duplicated. This class will teach students a variety of painterly techniques including additive and subtractive mark making, stenciling and masking, overprinting and various other image making techniques. The class also investigates relief printing using linoleum and wood block techniques. We will cut and ink blocks to produce graphic images which can be combined with painterly monotype techniques. Students will have access to a large etching press and other hand printing techniques. This is a class for experimentation and play within a painterly language. The class consists of demonstrations, painting and printing sessions, critiques and field trips. Solvents, etching inks and plates will be provided. Additional supplies may need to be purchased.

June 13 - June 27   Morning

This session will be focused on painting within landscape mode and structure. We will paint both outside as well as in the studio. We will explore the continuum between painting pictorially and non-pictorially. Some paintings will be painted entirely outside, some taken back inside and re-worked, some painted completely inside, some beginning inside and then taken outside etc. Drawing and structure will be central and consistently entertained regardless of differences in the appearance of the paintings. Drawings, collages, and watercolors will also be a part of the session. We will explore a range of approaches, all driven by the traditional, stacked vertical landscape structure.

Drawing: From Italian Renaissance to Today with Keith White

June 27 - July 11

The Italian Renaissance produced a unique body of work inspired by the land, the culture, and a particular moment in time. The foundation for this period was drawing, and figure drawing was central to studio practices. Although artists of the Italian Renaissance in their time studied the works of acknowledged masters, Leonardo da Vinci wrote "The painter will produce pictures of little excellence if he takes other painters as his authority, but if he learns from natural things he will bear good fruit." So, aligning with Leonardo's mindset, the focus of this class is life drawing.

Whether you are starting your artistic journey or an advanced practitioner, you too can breathe the air and bask in the Umbrian light that inspired Renaissance greats whilst engaging in the tradition of life drawing. Artists will have the unique opportunity to push their own style to a new level by wrestling with aesthetic questions raised by Italian Renaissance aesthetics and through novel drawing exercises. Foundational topics such as design, composition, value, gesture, flow, and other means to achieve plastic visual experiences will also be covered.

Join us for this opportunity to pursue Leonardo's ideal. Come draw the figure in the land that launched the revival of classicism in the West.