Art Workshop Reports / Art zine "Beakuency: Bird-Friendly Farms in Hudson Valley!" coming soon!
Invasive plant pigment workshops, nature-inspired stencil workshop, and the art zine update.
Paint-Making with Invasive Plants Workshop with CCECG
Beakuency: Bird-Friendly Farms in Hudson Valley! is a community-engaged art project developed with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Columbia and Greene Counties. It offers hands-on workshops and a free art zine to highlight local agricultural conservation and explore coexistence. Invasive plants are used as teaching materials in the workshops and to create illustrations for this zine. The materials are collected through local land management practices aimed at restoring ecological balance, which also benefits bird populations.
Two pigment workshops were held in June, one in Acra and one in Hudson, NY. Participants experienced every stage of making lake pigment, except for the final grinding stage in a mortar.
From participants’ feedback:
I loved your workshop this weekend!! It was such a beautiful yet practical introduction to paint making, and I’m very excited to apply the new skills in my studio soon.
I went to such a great workshop today on making paint from invasive plants with @mayukof through @ccecgc !! I now have a sense of the process and can’t wait to experiment with making pigments.
I also had a presentation table to share the results from my experiments. If you’re interested, there will be two more workshops in the fall!
Beakuency: Bird-Friendly Farms in Hudson Valley! Art Zine coming soon
I am currently working hard to finish all the illustrations and magazine layouts! It is scheduled for release in mid-July. The first major distribution will happen at the Greene County Youth Fair on July 23 -26, at the CCECG table. Copies will also be available for free at libraries and small businesses across Greene and Columbia Counties.
This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by CREATE Council on the Arts.
The grant covers the printing costs, but I pay for everything else out of pocket to produce this zine. If you’d like to support this project, you can make a one-time or monthly donation via my newly created Buy Me a Coffee page, or become a paid subscriber of this Beakuency Substack!
Visit Beakuency Buy Me a Coffee
Stencil Workshop at the Taconic Ridge Farm
Grateful for all the wonderful participants of my stencil workshop at Taconic Ridge Farm! We found design inspiration in the garden, and everyone’s piece came out beautifully. I love seeing how each person brings a different approach to the same process I work with all the time. Some aim for complexity, others for simplicity; some are intuitive, and others methodical. It’s like throwing a stone into water and watching different ripples spread every time, infinite variations of the uniqueness within us. I think art is truly a fun thing.
From participant’s feedback:
I really enjoyed the tactile experience of collecting the plants, being mindful of the kind of shapes that would make compelling cut-outs.
I’m available for hosting art-making workshops!
If you’re interested in having me, please feel free to contact me. I shared some of my ideas about teaching an art workshop in this article.
