Recycled Rhythm and Sound Sculpture: An Island Exploration
Conducted by: Ellen Clegg

Explore Star with new ears and eyes as we create music and instruments together throughout the week. We will transform island trash and debris into sound sculptures and use them to create a rhythm orchestra together, while learning to listen more closely to the ever-present rhythms of the island and our lives. Ellen Clegg, Creator of Found Sounds, will guide us in creating Star's own community rhythm jam.

Through the creation of FOUND SOUNDS, Facilitator/Percussionist Ellen Clegg unites her passions, skills and training as a percussionist and experiential educator, facilitating large community rhythm events and rhythmical wellness programs throughout New England. Drumming since she was five, her journey has involved a wide array of styles and instruments, including West African drumming, drum set, timpani, marimba, and pan (steel drum). She now extends her repertoire to water jugs and wrench xylophones, building community through the universal language of rhythm.

FOUND SOUNDS Website:
www.foundsounds.com

DANCE WORKSHOP - 2003

Contemplative Movement
Conducted by: David Scheuneman and Madeline Still Bergstrom

David Scheuneman and Madeline Still Bergstrom will offer a workshop that explores how to deepen the meditative dimension of expressive movement. The workshop will draw on the traditions of chi gong, serenity-insight meditation, yoga, and sacred circle dance. Chi gong is an ancient Taoist art of using breath and motion for mind-body-spirit health. Serenity-insight meditation, drawn from Buddhism yet based on universal principles, is a practice of living with awareness in the present moment. Kripalu yoga, "the yoga of compassion," is a style of yoga that emphasizes the student's inner experience. Sacred circle dance is a meditative form of participatory dance that draws on folk dance traditions as well as newer dances.

About the Workshop Leaders:

Madeline Still Bergstrom has been a student of yoga for the last ten years and a certified Kripalu yoga teacher since 1998. In the past, she has studied ballet, jazz/modern, African, and Afro-Carribean dance; a current interest of hers is circle dancing. In addition to teaching yoga, Madeline teaches composition at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she will earn her M.A. in English this spring. She has attended conferences on Star Island regularly since 1992, beginning with YRUU andthen "graduating" to Arts. This fall, she will be marrying fellow yoga teacher Paul "Hop" Hopkins and moving to southern Vermont.

David Scheuneman is a graduate of Meadville/Lombard Theological School, the Unitarian-Universalist seminary in Chicago. He specializes in multifaith spiritual direction and meditation instruction, which he practices as a community ministry in Seattle. A shoaler since the 70s, he has varyingly attended the RE, YRUU, Young Adult and Arts weeks at Star Island, often serving on program staff or as minister-of-the-week.

DRAMA WORKSHOP - 2003

Improv Comedy
Conducted by: Barry Press 

This workshop will offer its participants an opportunity to learn how to create wild and zany characters in outrageous situations, without feeling self-conscious. As we will learn how to do this, we will derive material from suggestions from our own group, and then, later from an audience. Spontaneous creativity and lots of laughter make up this workshop. All are welcome, and no previous acting experience is necessary.

Barry Press has an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and an AB in Speech/Theatre from Bates College. Professionally, he has been an active actor/director/teacher for over twenty-five years. As an actor, he has worked Off-Broadway, and at the Merrimack, Seattle, Yale and Trinity Repertory Theatres, among others. He has directed at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, American Stage (Florida), Worcester Forum Theatre, and a number of theaters in Seattle. He was a co-founder, performer and producer of Seattle TheatreSports, an international improvisational performance event, which has an active educational outreach program. He has taught at Princeton University, University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, College of the Holy Cross, Eckerd College (Florida), University of Washington, Trinity Rep Conservatory, Perishable Theatre Arts School, and has been a Guest Artist and Teaching Associate at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English for eighteen years, at both its Vermont and Alaskan campuses. Through National Endowment for the Humanities grants, he has brought his skills as both actor and teacher into a variety of middle and high school classrooms, from Alaska to Florida. Mr. Press is the founder and Artistic Director of LIVING LITERATURE (www.livingliterature.org), listed in the Education Roster of the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts, as is his own writing program, ImproWriting.  

PHOTOGRAPHY 
WORKSHOP - 2003

Capturing Moods
Conducted by: Gary R. Thompson

Capturing the moods and atmosphere of Star Island through photography will be the goal of this year's photography workshop. You will learn how to utilize natural light in creative ways to obtain images that range from subtle beauty, to surreal, to the abstract or provocative.

The first part of each workshop session will be instructional. During this time you will be shown techniques and given ideas of how to take quality images. The second portion of the workshop will be a friendly and constructive critiquing of each others work. To accomplish this you will be encouraged to shoot slides. We will use film (ektachromes and fujichromes) that can be processed by E-6 processing. The film will be processed overnight and can be viewed for critiquing the next day. In addition to the workshop time, I will be available to assist you or give ideas about photographing such things as sunrises, sunsets, macro work, landscapes, abstracts, or whatever we find.

Hopefully, when you leave Star you will have a new awareness of natural light, and increased knowledge and skills on using it creatively when making photographic images. The cliché "painting with light" will have meaning. You will never drive down the road and visualize a bland landscape again.

About the Artist:
Gary R. Thompson is one of the best selling art photographers in Western New York State. His prints are included in over five hundred private and commercial collections throughout the United States and Canada. His work, although primarily shown along the east coast, is displayed from Hawaii to New York, and from Florida to Maine. His work is currently in four galleries.

Specializing in limited edition landscapes and seascapes, Gary's images seem to stir feelings and moods in the minds of those who view his work. His prints often project a harmonious and peaceful co-existence between nature and man. Many observers speak of his prints as if they were paintings. This confirms his goal of "painting with light". Hoping that his work will promote an appreciation of the environment he has elected to emphasize the romantic and positive beauty of the natural world.

In addition to being a photographer, Gary is a teacher and coach and brings that perspective to his workshops. He recently retired as a very successful high school chemistry teacher, and cross country & track coach. When retiring Gary held the record for most wins coaching cross country for all of New York State. He has been teaching photography part time and leading workshops and field trips for seventeen years. The popularity of his photo classes is renowned in the Rochester, NY area, probably due to his collaborative nature and sincere dedication. They have become so popular that he now has to offer four sections of his class each season. He has several students who have taken his courses and workshops over thirty times. Gary kiddingly says "I can't seem to get these folks through the final exam".  Many of his regular students have reached a level where they exhibit their own photography. Several have had solo shows at quality galleries.

He and his wife Phyllis have led photo tours to: the Canadian Rockies, the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, and along the Maine Coast. This year they jointly are leading two different photo tours to Vermont. Phyllis currently shares photographic billing with Gary and has become known for her panorama prints. She has developed a client following of her own. Together they have photographed almost all of the National Parks in the United States and Canada. Most recently they photographed the Fall color from deep in Denali National Park, and the Brown Bears of the Katmai Coast, both in Alaska.

WRITING WORKSHOP - 2003

Listening and Writing: Collecting Oral History
Conducted by: Susan Barlow

Have you ever wished you knew more about your parents’ experiences? Do you regret the stories you never wrote down when friends or relatives talked of their struggles and joys? Does your local historical society need help with its oral history project, particularly for the generation now in its 80s? Here’s a hands-on workshop to help you collect stories from the past and make them live for today and for the future. Everyone has a story that can instruct, delight, and provoke. You can help people bring out those stories, and pick up ideas on writing your own story.

Susan Barlow manages the Oral History Project of her local Historical Society. She serves as a community television producer and has featured elderly and not-so-elderly storytellers on public access television programs. She has published historical accounts of parachute-making during WWII, fabric-mill work during the Depression, and running a household when the fishmonger came to the house with a horse and wagon. She is a founding member of the Unitarian Universalist Society: East in Manchester, CT. She has retired from the corporate life.

VISUAL WORKSHOPS 2003

Workshop I:
Totemic Sculptures
Conducted by: Allison Newsom, Sculpture

Workshop II:
Hand Made Books
Conducted by: Candis Dixon

Totemic Sculptures
In this workshop we will be creating totemic sculptures using a fast-drying gypsum cement called hydrocal. The work will incorporate a variety of techniques, including covering mesh screens, and sand casting. Found materials from around the Island will also be incorporated in a variety of ways, and color pigments will be available in a range of earthy and bright primary colors. Participants will be encouraged to combine both formal and narrative elements into their sculptures. Participants should bring their own sketch book. All other materials, for which there will be a small fee, will be supplied.

About the Artist:
Allison Newsome received her MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her childhood home was in California, beneath the redwoods. As an adult she has split her time between Rhode Island and Mexico, where she was the Director of Ceramics at the Mexico Instituto Allende, San Miguel De Allende, from 1987-1997. She presently spends her time between Warren, RI and Prudence Island, RI, where her six year old twins attend a one room school house. Allison's work draws on the cultures of all three of the regions where she has lived and worked, and addresses "the evolution of our ecology and the human psyche as changes occur from the wilderness to the agrarian to the industrial." She is represented by Boston's Grand Central Gallery, and samples of her work can be viewed online at www.grandcentralgallery.com.

(top of page)

Hand Made Books
Conducted by: Candis Dixon

This workshop will give each person a variety of skills, both technical and inspirational. It's designed so that you can make a book a day. Whole books built from within. Visual. Tactile. Fun to hold. Using dreams, paint, feathers, shingles, text, needle and thread, ideas, paper, wind, water, motion. Go!

About the Artist:
Candis Dixon has been teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design since 1991. She enjoys making books and paper and sculpture and loves to have fun while working. Other interests include language, stories and jokes. She especially likes to invent things and admits to being a bit "quirky", but easy going.

(top of page)

[home] [aboutarts] [aboutstar] [contactus] [register] [galleries] [links] [music] [dance] [drama] [photography] [writing] [visualarts] [guestartist] [minister] [archives]