Workshops
AMH provides a range of experiential and creative workshops led by expert practitioners in their fields.
Save some money on workshops by becoming a member of Arts Mid-Hudson. Click here to find out more.
Questions? Send to [email protected]
Anxiety, Fear and Unrest: Writing to Help You Cope in an Uncertain World
This two-part workshop is designed for first-responders, teachers, or anyone experiencing high levels of anxiety, stress, or isolation in the wake of COVID, civil unrest, climate change, or joblessness. The first workshop session will focus on a series of writing exercises to identify and then help you let go of those concerns that may be interfering with your ability to create or perform effectively in your work or personal life. The second session will focus on how to build and expand upon those exercises to develop meaningful narratives, either fact-based or fiction, that help illuminate today’s life experiences and allow us to reconnect with ourselves and others.
Date: Tuesday, April 20th; 7 – 8:15 and Tuesday, April 27th, 7-8:15 pm
Location: Zoom Virtual Event
Price: $50 members/$65 for nonmembers
Age: Adults 18-80
Materials Needed: Access to writing tools (pen and paper or computer/laptop)
About the Teaching Artist: Sandi Sonnenfeld is a published fiction writer, memoir writer, and essayist. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Sandi holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she studied under National Book Award Winner Charles Johnson. Upon the publication of her memoir, This is How I Speak (2002: Impassio Press), which recounts Sandi’s struggle to come to terms with herself both as an artist and a woman after surviving a terrifying sexual assault, Sandi was named a Celebration Author by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, which recognizes writers whose work merits special notice. Her short stories and personal essays have appeared in more than 30 literary magazines and anthologies. She’s currently working on a historical novel set in 17th- century Russia. Sandi lives in Poughkeepsie and has taught writing at Marist College, Western Connecticut State University, and other colleges throughout the country. Visit https://authorsandisonnenfeld.com
Jumpstart Your Poems Using Art!
Do you want to jumpstart vivid and effective imagery in your poems? Imagery (anything you can see/hear/taste/touch/smell lends verisimilitude (“life-likeness”) to your poetry. Using other works of fine art can give you a jumping-off place, something to help you both describe and react to what you are seeing and feeling. We will read some famous ekphrastic poems (poems that are inspired by other works of art). I will share my ekphrastic poems and then you will try your hand at your own poem based on another work of art. The act of creating involves intensely focusing on the subject. Dorothea Lange said, “Art is an act of attention.” So art is someone’s intensely focused work which we will use to hone our focus!
How does inspiration flow from one medium to another? How do poets work with images and themes they encounter in visual or musical art forms? Finding language to evoke and confront a painting, a sculpture, or a photograph is challenging because you want to do more than merely describe the art; you want to react to it and see where else it takes you. Remember, no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader! Doing this should enhance your use of the concrete world of imagery that surrounds us to write better poems!
Date: 7:00 – 8:30 pm Monday, May 10
Location: Zoom Virtual Event
Price: $30 members/$45 for nonmembers
Age: 16+
Materials Needed: Access to writing tools (pen and paper or computer/laptop)
About the Teaching Artist:
Raphael Kosek is our very own Dutchess County Poet Laureate for 2019-2020 and she has been an adjunct English professor at both DCC and Marist for 15 years. Her latest chapbook, Rough Grace won the 2014 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Prize and her book, American Mythology was a finalist at Brick Road Poetry Press and published in 2019. Her poems and lyric essays have been widely published and have garnered prizes and Pushcart Prize nominations. She has written and published many poems inspired by the arts and has lead workshops in both high school and college to enhance the writing of poetry via art. She is a Vassar College graduate and has a Masters’s in American literature from Western Connecticut State University.
Introduction to You Can Do Calligraphy!
Calligraphy is the timeless art of creating visually expressive and elegant designs using letters of a variety of alphabets. This workshop, taught by renowned instructor, Jim Bennett, will enable you step-by-step to acquire skill in this art. You will learn about the various pens and inks and the traditional techniques for their use.
We will cover the elegant and highly useful Italic alphabet (see illustration).
Week one: Materials and Shapes of Letters
Week two: How to use pen set
Week three: Variation on a foundation alphabet
Following this introductory workshop, we will offer a second series that will focus on four additional, foundational alphabets: Blackletter, Roman, Bookhand, and Uncial. These alphabets plus Italic will enable you to create virtually all the alphabets known today! As we work on mastery of these alphabets, we will apply our skills to create a series of projects such as designing a fancy signature, lettering quotations, and invitations creating posters, plaques, signs, and certificates.
All the instruction and practice sheets are handmade by the instructor and are free to enrollees.
Whether you are interested in simply taking up a personally satisfying hobby or you would like to expand your artistic skills professionally, this course will get you started in the right way on the right path.
Date: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm; Tuesdays, May 11, 18, & 25
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $67 (only $22 per hour) members; $82 (only $27 per hour) non-members
Age: 12 +
Materials Needed: Downloadable instruction and practice sheets. A calligraphy fountain pen set with a selection of nibs and appropriate ink (basic level), practice paper. I recommend the Manuscript deluxe set for right-handers and Pelikan 4001 black ink, http://calligraphybycorrespondence.com/cbcproducts.html
Please note: Materials are to be purchased AFTER the first class.
About the Teaching Artist:
Jim Bennett is an award-winning artist and teacher with over five decades of experience teaching in Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, and New York. He has taught over a thousand people to do calligraphy through his workshops, books, and online instruction. He was the originator of the International Calligraphy WebRing and also created an Italic handwriting curriculum (grades K – 4) for Wakefield School in Huntly, Virginia – a curriculum that has been adopted by many homeschoolers. He is the author and illustrator of Calligraphy For Dummies, Modern italic Handwriting, Calligraphy for Creative Kids, and You Can Do Calligraphy.
Find Your Visual Voice
Media: Any 2-D painting, drawing, or collage mediums
This course will help students tap their ideas and provide tactile strategies to express them visually by studying the components of 2-D image-making. The discussion will target the relationship of the background place and space to the subjects and content in the image. We will also examine ways to employ the artist’s tools (color, scale, composition, and various “styles”) to leverage what I call “pictorial hierarchy” = making visual decisions that communicate your ideas.
Students will learn about specific practices that will move them closer to their ideas, namely collecting and examining images they choose, studying the work of specific artists (including myself, as I’ll share my own journey of pushing through a path of inquiry), and paying attention to repetition and what is meaningful to them.
This course is designed to help students learn how to deconstruct and unpack an image, employ that knowledge to their own artistic practice, and begin developing their own unique visual vocabulary to express and communicate their ideas. Students will be expected to be open-minded, take risks, and to think creatively and untraditionally about the possibilities.
Date: 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm; Wednesdays, May 12, 19, 26 and June 2
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $65 ($10.80 an hour) members; $80 ($13.30 an hour) non-members
Age: 18 +
Materials Needed: Student’s Choice based on the description
About the Teaching Artist:
Jill Ziccardi was born in Freeport, NY, and grew up in Farmingdale in a traditional Italian working-class family, but got hooked on art as a teenager. She holds a BFA in Art (with honors) from Carnegie Mellon University (1986) and was awarded a full-tuition merit scholarship to pursue her MFA in Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1989).
Ziccardi spent 25+ years working in arts education and program development in academia (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Valparaiso University, ACM Chicago Arts Program, Columbia College, University of Illinois) museum education (Art Institute of Chicago, Guggenheim), and non-profit leadership (Free Arts NYC, Oasis, 1199SEIU Employer Child Care Corporation, Police Athletic League, among others).
After living in Chicago for 16 years, Ziccardi moved back to her native NY in 2001 and commuted on her bike in the city until she bought a house in Highland, NY in 2010 and then became a MetroNorth commuter. In 2013, she made a decision to shift her work environment closer to home and worked local temporary teaching gigs intermittently at Mill Street Loft (now the Art Effect) and Ramapo for Children, but she and her partner now run a business from their home.
Ziccardi is an accomplished artist, a passionate educator, and a do-gooder. She has always maintained an active studio practice and has been exhibiting her work for decades.
Her exhibition in September 2017 at Knaus Gallery in Highland helped expose her unique brand of image-making to the Hudson Valley art scene. Since then, she has been engaged in the local art community; participating in the 2018 Annual New Paltz Open Studio, presenting work in March 2019 at the first Creative Conversations at Roost Gallery (New Paltz), and has recently participated in the following juried group exhibitions: Natura at Limner Gallery (Hudson) in April 2019, Juxtapose Gallery (Rosendale) in June and July 2019, FOCUS: Illumination at Woodstock Artist Association in August 2019, Women at Queen City 15 (Poughkeepsie) in September 2020, What’s Your Favorite Color? at Gallery 40 (Poughkeepsie) in October 2020 and has begun exhibiting and teaching online.
Branding & Marketing Basics for Artists
Do you have a brand positioning? Are you maximizing your marketing efforts? Whether you’re an individual artist, a small culture group or an arts organization, you have a brand. So let’s look to create or flesh out your brand story and boost your marketing. A logo, website, e-news and social media are just part of the mix. In this workshop, we’ll provide on-the-spot ideas and inspirations to get things going. We’ll look at real examples and talk about what you’re doing (or could be doing) in a fun, spirited discussion.
Date: 12:00 – 1:00 pm; Thursdays, June 10
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $30 members; $45 non-members
Age: 18 +
Materials Needed: Artists with websites and social media pages can have them ready to view, or reference in the conversation.
About the Teaching Artist:
Andrea Rhodes is a marketing specialist and owner of Gig Marketing, based in Tivoli. Gig helps businesses, organizations and artists put their best foot forward. She has been an independent consultant in the Hudson Valley for twelve years; prior to that, she worked in the advertising, sales and marketing fields in New York City for over two decades, handling world-class brands for top ad agencies and boutique firms. She is co-director of Tivoli Merchants + Artists, a board member of the Rhinebeck Chamber of Commerce, and a member of Arts Mid Hudson, Upstate Women in Film & Television and Hudson Valley Women in Business – and is co-owner of Tangent Theatre Company, a professional group whose trademark intimate theater hopes to re-emerge again soon. She is a 2017 Hudson Valley Magazine Top Women in Business honoree for her theater company work.
Collage and Assemblage
Learn the methods of collage (from the French coller, “to glue,”) a technique where artwork is made from an assemblage of different materials including magazine and newspaper clippings, ribbons, paint, bits of colored or handmade papers, portions of other artwork, photographs and other found objects; glued to a piece of paper or canvas.
Date: 10:00 am – 12:00 pm; Saturdays, June 12, 19, 26 and July 3
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $75 ($9.30 an hour) members; $90 ($11.25 an hour) non-members
Age: 13+
Materials Needed: A variety of papers of different colors, texture, and weight, as well as small three-dimensional objects that have personal meaning to the artist.
About the Teaching Artist:
Victoria earned a BFA degree from the University of New Hampshire where she majored in drawing and printmaking techniques. Further studies in printmaking at Pratt Graphics Center and Purchase College directed her to work as a fine art edition printer at Solo Press in Manhattan where a surge of interest in the woodcut led to edition printing for many New York and European artists experimenting with the medium. A Masters in Studio Art program at the College of New Rochelle inspired Victoria to explore more immediate and diverse media such as watercolor, pastel, collage and assemblage. At present, she is exploring mixed media assemblage to create objects reflecting a continuing connection to nature, a constant theme in her work.
Close Up Enjoying a Beautiful Daisy
Take a day to relax and create this beautiful daisy, you can cherish all year long. It will never wilt! No experience necessary, we will show you step by step. Have a wonderful afternoon with creating and getting away from it all.
Date: 1:00 – 3:00 pm; Sunday, June 13
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $45 members; $60 non-members
Age: 10+
Materials Needed: 11×14” canvas, #8,#2 round brushes, ¾” and ½’ flat brushes. Paint; yellow, blue, green, red, white and black, hair dryer, water, paper towels, container for water (we will be switching the water in the middle of the workshop)
About the Teaching Artist:
Jill Obrig has been an artist, teaching art to students ranging from 2-92 for over 30 years. Her works have been shown in ASK of Kingston, Unframed Artist Gallery in New Paltz and in Long Island at the Islip Museum at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY. She has won Arts Mid Hudson Grants from 2016-2020 in teaching many in libraries around the Hudson Valley. She taught art in venues that include Public Schools, art museums, art galleries, private homes, and libraries. Jill owns a studio in Stone Ridge NY.
Pour Fluid Acrylic
Acrylic pour painting is a painting technique that uses acrylic paints mixed with a pouring medium. The mixture is poured onto the canvas or surface of choice to create a beautiful fluid abstract composition.
In this workshop we will learn techniques for successful pouring, How to make your own pour mixture, Drying and sealing your finished composition
Date: 12:30 – 2:00 pm; Mondays, June 14, 21, and 28
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $35 members; $50 non-members
Age: 16+
Materials Needed: Soft Body Acrylic Paints (You can get an acrylic paint set of 12 or 24 paints)
https://www.dickblick.com/products/liquitex-basics-acrylic-colors/
Include extra neutral colors such as Black Grey, White
Various size Paintbrushes
https://www.hobbylobby.com/
https://www.michaels.com/
100% Primed Cotton Canvas (whatever size you like)
Liquitex Pouring Medium gloss -16oz- https://www.dickblick.com/products/liquitex-pouring-medium
Plastic Cups with lids
Squeeze Bottles (2 will work fine)
Disposable Latex Gloves
Rag
Drop Cloth
Craft Sticks
Optional:
Hairdryer
Silicone Spray
About the Teaching Artist:
From a noticeably young age I was attracted to the paintbrush and the feeling of putting paint on the canvas was exhilarating. I was mesmerized by colors, shapes, forms, and
I was mesmerized by colors, shapes, forms, and textures. A connection to the “Universe” blossomed into a Contemporary Abstract Artist.
I am constantly exploring and experimenting with forms, lines, shapes, and vibrant colors. My approach to the artistic process offers an expression into my own life’s experiences, dreams, memories, and spirituality.
Having studied the works of Jackson Pollock, Maurice Esteve, Paul Klee, and Pablo Picasso, I tried to constructively implement into my motifs a sort of abstract expressionism, strictly using oils and acrylic paints. I have learned over the years to turn off my ego and paint from the soul thus giving me the opportunity to create from a peaceful place.
I am currently studying and working from my studio located in Central, NY.
Create an Art Series with an Accountability Coach: Tilly
Establish a 6-week daily art practice and create a series of works with an accountability coach. We will end the series with an exhibition opening and a virtual gallery show of your work. You will be guided each week in the steps to goal setting, series synthesis, time management, handling challenges, chronicling insights, and celebrating successes. All media artists welcome. Just show up! Your accountability coach will inspire the discipline to create 6 to 40 drawings or paintings! Working in a series has many benefits. It is a tool to process an event, emotion, and even relationships. If you do anything for 40 days it will change your life!
Date: 7:00 – 8:00 pm; Tuesdays, June 15, 22, 29, July 6, 13, and 20
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $100 members; $115 non-members
Age: 16+
Materials Needed: We will discuss this in the first session. A journal or sketchbook would be good for taking notes. You will need to get your art own supplies for whatever you plan to be doing- could be drawing in a sketchbook, or painting 40 mini canvasses. Only limited by your imagination
About the Teaching Artist:
Tilly Strauss has been an artist since the age of five and a striving daily painter since 2006. She has worked in a variety of media and loves sharing the tips and tricks of her studio practice and encouraging others to establish the discipline that allows magic to happen. Her blog “Showing up for the Muse” emphasizes curiosity and perseverance. She has served on the board of the Dutchess County Arts Council and has taught all age groups in schools around the world. Art is a language that embraces diverse and unique voices. Tilly strives to create inclusive, safe, and inspiring experiences for everyone.
Abstract Intuitive Painting
Intuitive Abstract Painting enables the individual to uncover images of their inner selves through painting.
The goal for this workshop is not to create a gallery composition, or to learn specific painting techniques. Rather, the goal is to allow yourself to become one with the canvas and colors, while allowing your inner creativity to emerge.
We are going to paint to release our creative inner self, let the painting speak to your while letting go of fear and judgment. This will allow your painting to flow.
Date: 11:00 am – 12:30 pm; Wednesdays, July 14, 21, and 28
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $30 members; $45 non-members
Age: 18+
Materials Needed: Acrylic Paints (Warm & Cool Colors) https://www.dickblick.com/
Include neutral colors such as; Black Grey, White
Various size Paintbrushes
https://www.hobbylobby.com/
https://www.michaels.com/
If you have your own brushes, please use what makes you comfortable (Bright size 18,16,14,12) (Round Brushes)
Stretched canvas- choose a size you are comfortable with
2 Glass Jars
Rag
Plastic Tablecloth
Color Wheel
Optional Items.
Marking tools
Old comb
Old toothbrush
Spatula
About the Teaching Artist:
From a noticeably young age I was attracted to the paintbrush and the feeling of putting paint on the canvas was exhilarating. I was mesmerized by colors, shapes, forms, and
I was mesmerized by colors, shapes, forms, and textures. A connection to the “Universe” blossomed into a Contemporary Abstract Artist.
I am constantly exploring and experimenting with forms, lines, shapes, and vibrant colors. My approach to the artistic process offers an expression into my own life’s experiences, dreams, memories, and spirituality.
Having studied the works of Jackson Pollock, Maurice Esteve, Paul Klee, and Pablo Picasso, I tried to constructively implement into my motifs a sort of abstract expressionism, strictly using oils and acrylic paints. I have learned over the years to turn off my ego and paint from the soul thus giving me the opportunity to create from a peaceful place.
I am currently studying and working from my studio located in Central, NY.
French Window. Ners, France
“Escape” to France with an evening of painting this wonderful spring window in Ners France. Imagine the sun, sound and beauty of the new vines growing! No experience necessary. Contact for more information and registration. Tres Bien!
Date: 1:00 – 3:00 pm; Sunday, August 8
Location: Virtual Event
Price: $47 members; $62 non-members
Age: 10+
Materials Needed: 11×14” canvas, #8,#2 round brushes, ¾” and ½’ flat brushes. Paint; yellow, blue, green, red, white and black, hairdryer, water, paper towels, container for water( we will be switching the water in the middle of the workshop)
Click here to RSVP by August 6
About the Teaching Artist:
Jill Obrig has been an artist, teaching art to students ranging from 2-92 for over 30 years. Her works have been shown in ASK of Kingston, Unframed Artist Gallery in New Paltz and in Long Island at the Islip Museum at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY. She has won Arts Mid Hudson Grants from 2016-2020 in teaching many in libraries around the Hudson Valley. She taught art in venues that include Public Schools, art museums, art galleries, private homes, and libraries. Jill owns a studio in Stone Ridge NY.