The Spontaneous: Word and Image with Karen Fish and Vicky Tomayko

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Monday-Wednesday, August 19-21, 9:30am-2:30pm

 3 sessions | $380 for members, $400 for non-members 

Print materials included in price of workshop (excluding paper, which is available for purchase at PAAM). Please bring a notebook and pen or pencil for writing.

This workshop is designed for writers who want to experiment with the visual and for visual artists who want to experiment with text.

By blending the feel of a studio space and writing workshop, we will find new inspiration in unconventional places—poems, texts, and images of all sorts. The prompts will challenge us to go outside our usual, rote self-assignments, place our normal tools aside, and find new ones to add. (No experience necessary in your experimental medium!) Try something new in printmaking. Explore the Tetra Pak, to make monoprints. The Tetra Pak is the carton that soup and milk come in and the inside is the perfect surface to use as a printing matrix. It can be easily cut into shapes and inscribed with imagery. It holds beautifully rich plate tones when wiped, a completely unique look to explore. Feel braver for experimenting for experimentation’s sake—the root of all innovation. The aim is to create a dialogue between printmaking and writing in a collaborative, supportive space so that after this workshop, you can continue the dialogue yourself in your solo practice.

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ABOUT THE TEACHING ARTIST

Karen Fish is the author of three collections, The Cedar Canoe, What Is Beyond Us, and most recently, No Chronology published by University of Chicago Press. She has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and was a visiting lecturer at Princeton University. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines including:The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Yale Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New Republic, and Slate.

Vicky Tomayko is an artist and printmaker living in Truro, MA. Tomayko teaches at Cape Cod Community College, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown where she also manages the print studio. Tomayko was assistant professor of printmaking at Connecticut College, 1979 through 1981, and was awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in 1985. She received an MFA in printmaking from Western Michigan University, and has been the recipient of two Ford Foundation Grants. She is represented by the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown.

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Vicky Tomayko, Tetrapod Jumping, 2024, tetrapak etching, 9 x 12 inches  

Excerpt from “The Accounting” by Karen Fish