Picture This: Photography Essentials for Teens

This course reimagines landscape in contemporary photography—not as scenery, but as a living threshold where history, identity, and climate converge. Exploring intersections of gender, identity, environment, and spirit, we’ll ask how art can witness collapse while opening pathways to transformation. Students create and share work that embraces impermanence, finds beauty within loss, and honors the inseparability of self and place. Through shared knowledge, dialogue, and accountability, we build community and deepen artistic practice. The course invites artists to connect soul to practice, engage a world in flux, and create images that awaken perception and reimagine possibility.

Explore the dynamic intersection of screen printing and collage through unhinged silkscreens, layered imagery, and texture. Participants begin by creating bold screen printed works using hand-drawn or photo-based methods. Prints are then transformed through cutting, tearing, and pasting onto new substrates such as paper, vinyl, or found materials. This hands-on workshop welcomes all skill levels and emphasizes intuitive play, composition, and storytelling through composition and negative space. Demonstrations, open studio time, group critique, and one-on-one guidance support students in developing unique works that merge screen print and collage into vibrant hybrid artworks.

This immersive workshop invites participants to delve into the art of handmade papermaking and the alternative photographic process of cyanotype. Participants explore the natural world as a source of both materials and inspiration, emphasizing the inherently place-based nature of these techniques. The first part of the workshop focuses on collecting and processing local plant materials, including invasive species, to create handmade paper. Participants learn essential papermaking techniques, such as fiber preparation, pulping, sheet formation, and drying, while discovering which plants are best suited for papermaking. In the second phase, participants investigate photographic imagery through the lens of place and connection. Using cyanotype—a historic photographic process known for its vivid blue tones—participants design image-based compositions that integrate seamlessly with their handmade paper. By merging organic materials with photographic imagery, the workshop creates a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of craft, nature, and storytelling. Ideal for artists and creatives interested in sustainable practices, alternative photography, and the expressive potential of handmade paper, this workshop fosters innovation and a deep appreciation for place-based artmaking.