Teaching
MATERIALS FIRST.
This is what catches my eye. This is what fascinates me today. This is the next thing I will do. The process is that simple. Move from one step to the next step as your mind and your hands tell you what to do. It happens according to an impulse in a moment of time.
CONTAINER NEXT.
Scribbles, blobs, twists, tries, shapes, lines, messes. Now what? There are places we can hold the marks we've made, which means creating a vessel for the work. What could the container be? What does it need to hold? Is it sturdy, round, tall, flat? Is it a canvas, a collage, a book, a sculpture, a mobile?
Foraged Books: The Art of Place
June 15-19, 2026
Chateau de la Napoule
Mandelieu-la-Napoule, France
Delve into consciousness and memory for your magical places and stories and create an artist’s book to contain your concepts. Your book(s) may become a travel journal of this, a past or future trip, a free-wheeling, non-linear record of an experience or thought, and a certain path to dynamic creative exploration!
Château de la Napoule is rich in thought-provoking imagery. Treasure hunts will yield images, ideas, or objects that spark fascination. Learn several folded and bound book structures, experiment with various tools and mark making techniques, lettering, and ways of thinking about what writing is.
We’ll take a field trip to the world-renowned Fondation Maeght in Nice to see their one of a kind collection of artists’ books.
I'm thrilled to be teaching two workshops at this magical château near Cannes, France. These are all-inclusive wellbeing retreats centered around artmaking and self-discovery. Find out more here!
The Secret Lives of Materials
June 29-July 3, 2026
Chateau de la Napoule
Mandelieu-la-Napoule, France
We are intimately connected to the materials we choose in all parts of our lives—especially in art making. We are drawn to materials through texture, color, smell, shape, scale, and movement. Our creative processes emerge from gestures that live within us, shaped by past experiences and memories.
Artists often choose materials that reflect identity, personal heritage, and the ideas or concepts they are exploring in their work. The origin stories of the materials we reach for carry energy, and that energy flows into the making process. Simply put, artists who work with wood often feel a deep connection to the forest.
In this workshop, we will experiment with a range of materials while exploring their origin stories and their historical, cultural, and personal significance. We will investigate how tools, substrates, gestures, and methods of attachment shape the creative process.
Through these explorations, each participant will develop work that emerges directly from their relationship with materials.
I'm excited to co-teach this workshop with Kathryn Cameron, a New York–based artist whose work explores the fragility of mind, body, and spirit through the symbolic language of shapes, forms, and color. Working with natural and repurposed materials such as paper, leather, wood, steel, and pure pigments, she investigates the profound interconnections between humanity and nature.
La Napoule Art Foundation: Threshold Art Retreats
An Infinite Path,
Kathryn Cameron
Medicine Wheel
Cindy Parker
Teaching Chez Vous
I'm available for classes or workshops at your site.
" A day will come when men will discover an alphabet in the eyes of chalcedonies, in the markings of the moth, and will learn in astonishment that every spotted snail has always been a poem."
- Alejo Carpentier