CONSHOHOCKEN >> Unless a trip to subtropical Okinawa beckons, Japanese cherry blossom time is still several weeks away.
On the other hand, you could try capturing the delicate grace of the iconic spring blooms in Conshohocken Art League’s upcoming classes in Japanese mixed media techniques.
Professional painter-printmaker Julie Zahn will lead the six-week series at CAL headquarters in the borough’s historic Mary Wood Park House starting Feb. 22. The Thursday night sessions are scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m. and cost $120.
CAL Director Eileen McDonnell says the classes are designed to expose artists to “inspired alternatives to the standard approach to a subject.”
“We’ll learn some interesting ways to work with paper, glue and pigments, founded in the classic Japanese traditions … stretching paper, hand-coloring and making our own prints,” she continues. “Bird imagery [will serve] as the initial springboard for a variety of hand-painted prints and/or collages, [while] students use their own sketches or reference photographs to begin some truly creative exploration.”
Philadelphia-based Zahn spent several years studying in Japan, but McDonnell speaks from her own experience in “the land of the rising sun.” The CAL director is a Lafayette Hill native who attended childhood classes at the local art center. But following her graduation from the former Archbishop Kennedy High School and Moore College of Art in the late 1970s, she spent a year working as a graphic designer in Tokyo and studying sumi-e, a form of Japanese monochrome ink painting, with a master of the technique at Tokyo’s Takabijutsu Atelier Mura.
“The experience was transformative,” McDonnell says. “The very approach to my previously traditional, Western-style compositions changed dramatically after studying there. Details became extraneous, essence more valuable.
“The Japanese incorporate a reverence for nature into their daily lives, no matter how frenetic. This capacity to extract appreciation for even the most fleeting, minute beauty is reflected in their respect for the very process of art-making as well.
“The simplification of forms into a spare composition, the subtle inclusion of tonal patterns and uncluttered economy of a brushstroke’s gesture are among the culture’s artistic gifts, … [and] following Julie’s example, both the novice and seasoned professional will find unexpected and welcome experimental opportunities to incorporate these novel tools into their own mixed media interpretation.”
After completing the four-year certificate program at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Zahn apprenticed with an antique screen restorer in Kyoto, Japan, and studied with a Japanese stencil dyeing (katazome) master.
“This taught her many ways to work with paper and has informed her studio practice ever since,” McDonnell says.
Zahn has also exhibited and taught at venues throughout the Greater Philadelphia area, and her work is included in a number of public collections. As a participant in last year’s CAL Visiting Artist Series, she spoke to the specialized methods and tools that drive that work.
Examples appear at juliezahn.net, and her technique is demonstrated in a video posted at vimeo.com/245602066.
Spots in Zahn’s upcoming Japanese mixed media classes may be reserved via CAL’s website, conshohockenartleague.org, or email to conshohockenartleague@gmail.com. Tuition includes supplies.
The organization’s spring roster features a variety of weekly adult, youth and teen classes as well as monthly open studio figure drawing sessions. The Zahn series is being offered as part of an ongoing selection of six-week specialty workshops.
CAL was established as a sketch club in October 1923 and is believed to be the oldest art group of its kind in Montgomery County. According to McDonnell and other CAL principals, its “curriculum still supports the 1923 template of classic composition, value, color theory and gesture for the beginner or returning student.”