My mother is a creative teacher. Growing up in our small apartment in Moscow,
Russia, I was always curious about how she worked with her students. When
I was 5, she let me participate in rhythmic classes and listen to poetry
readings. All my school years, I watched my mother teaching different programs,
and my own classes started forming in my head. While I was in High School,
my elementary school teacher allowed me to teach in an after-school program
for her classes. Teaching, something I always fantasized about since I was
a little girl, became a big part of my life. My first teaching job in America
was at a small private art school in Brooklyn, New York. I came up with
a program "Pick up an object": a set of painting and drawing exercises to
wake imagination through stories of everyday objects. In 1993 I was admitted
to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as a graduate student.
www.smfa.edu My major teaching experience during that time was a teaching
assistantship for Professor GERALD BERGSTEIN. For two inspiring years we
worked as a team. It was there and then, when I realized that the mediocre
teacher tells, the good one explains, the superior one shows, and the great
one inspires. After graduating I found my first job at the Boston Art Institute
in Boston, MA., as an instructor for an Intensive Freshmen Program. www.bai.edu
It was very exciting for me to work with university students as an instructor
for the first time. Now it was my job as a teacher to inspire them! I found
out that my truly special talents come in keeping classes exciting, intense
and interesting. Experimentation took a big place in the program. From 1996
to 2000 I taught painting, drawing and mixed media classes at the Cambridge
Center for Adult Education. www.ccae.org It was at that point when I noticed
that many adult students often wonder how some particular paintings have
been painted. The classes to understand the process of art by learning from
great artists made me to come up with a special class, that I later called
"Can I Paint Like That?" Today I often teach at MCAD
in Continuing Education, and I am also in the Mentor Program of W.A.R.M..
This fall and winter I will be teaching at Minneapolis
Community and Technical College.
My studio is open for students on Wednesday nights. Please contact me for
details
Each of us has creative works within waiting to be realized, and would like to bring what is meaningful in our lives into our art. How can we recapture that freedom and use art as a medium for personal transformation? This class will be an answer to this question.
The goal of this course is to encourage students to document their thoughts and ideas on a daily basis and find ways to use them in their artwork. Using a variety of materials and techniques, students will share ideas and discover for themselves. Looking through journals we will focus on the potential of various means of expression. Photography, photocopying, mark-making, written words, fetishes, sewn or constructed materials, food and cosmetics and the choice of surfaces are just some possibilities. Students are free to choose the best suited to express their ideas, but will also be directed each week by the unexpected theme given to them.
This is a workshop for people who are fascinated with endless possibilities of painting techniques and would like to discover them more deeply. We all know that paint is a magical material with thickness, thinness, texture, value, temperature and many other sides to it. And so do soups that we eat - all different with similar adjectives that can be used for their description, including TASTE! In this workshop we will learn a lot about painting techniques creating abstract paintings of soup surfaces. We will be able to use cooking recipes as our start point!
Bring more adventure to your watercolors: let them tell a story. This workshop explores how a visual narrative can tell a tale in paint. Participants spend their time exploring narrative, using our own experiences as creative raw material. Working primarily in watercolor, participants investigate how this medium might interact with other drawing materials and collage. The idea is to approach working on paper without use of words, with a sense of adventure in mind. What story will inspire your work? Discussions will tackle the question.
This class will focus on story telling through visual mediums by studying the nature of color, its perception, and representation through water-based mediums. Participants will discuss and explore the psychology of color, interpretation, historical perspectives, and individual response to color. Find your own color and respond to it.
Can we make sense of the wave of words, images and information that flood our lives? Is there a way to transform the disposable materials and scraps into something beautiful? How do we find symbols in trashcans? This course will explore methods and processes of collage/assemblage through open and unexpected self-discovery. A series of projects designed to introduce students to investigate the possibilities of collage as a personal and transformative art will introduce students to this exciting contemporary art form. This class can be in the drawing studio.
This workshop is a structured developmental introduction to the visual language. Concepts and skills are developed through sequential, observational and imaginative drawing. Using gesture drawing as a point of departure you will create images by interpreting what you see, Feel, and remember. Your awareness of space, unity, variety, emphasis, contrast, balance, movement and rhythm will be heightened an internalized. You will also realize that you are drawing infinitely more than what you see. Please bring to class an 18x24" pad of white 50 lb. drawing paper, B, 2B, 4B, 6B, pencil sharpener, scissors, glue, charcoal sticks, Eraser, your curiosity and your willingness to take risks.
People often begin a painting with an intuitive perception that has more weight and poignancy than what evolves in the course of the painting. This course will focus on nurturing and sustaining those impulses and perceptions. Paintings will be based on sketches or other documentations collected outside of the class. Students are required to have taken Beginning Painting or have at least a year of painting experience.
If there are noted artists whose works you love and would like to understand how they did what they did, this is a workshop for you. We will look at great artists, examine how they used color, light, space and also, art materials, and do paintings of our own that build on their techniques and subject matter. In the process we will demystify part of the process as we gain a greater understanding of their genius.
Dear students, friends and artists,
Intensive Wednesday in Alexandra's Studios is back!
There is now an on-going, intensive painting, drawing, creativity workshop happening every Wednesday,
in my studio in Minneapolis. This workshop is for participants who wish to nurture their own creative potential,
unleash their own inner artist, want some basic instructions or just simply a place to paint once a week and have fun!
Please join me on Wednesday evenings this February and March and be a part of this exciting creative journey.
I will facilitate group discussions and guide participants through inspiring readings and exercises. Schedule is following:
February 13 - March 26: 7 evening sessions
Time frame is 5:00 - 9:00 p.m.
You can come 8:00 the latest. Up to you.
Cost is $25 per session
Limited to 6 students
Please respond ASAP so I can start planning and give you more detailed directions.