2008 Courses

Special Note: Though several course and all on-campus housing options are currently full, we encourage you to sign up as a commuter, and/or add your name to the waitlist for your first class and housing choices. (The waitlist is free without a registration.) There's always the possibility that a spot will open up!

Poetry Workshop

Margaret Gibson

THIS OPTION IS CURRENTLY IN WAITLIST STATUS.

We will primarily be reading and discussing your poems in depth during our workshops together, offering comments that are constructive suggestions rather than judgments and that lead to a creative re-visioning of the poem. Our discussions may range into a consideration of a few poems by contemporary poets, if those poems offer insight on vision or voice or other matters of craft that can enrich our discussions—but we will focus on the integrity and power of each of your poems and how that poem fits into—or begins to suggest—your vision or a larger body of work. In order to make the workshop more valuable, we need to read each others' poems ahead of time. Please submit 4-5 poems of short to moderate length by regular mail so that it arrives at the Image office by July 1 AND e-mail the same poems to jmullins@imagejournal.org. You will be sent all of the workshop manuscripts by e-mail to print and bring with you to the workshop. As a poet, I have been fascinated by how a different choice of speaker can radically open up a poem—and so you may want to consider bringing poems that make use of a persona as well as those closer to “your” voice.

Digital Photography: Visual Witness

Kathy Hettinga

THIS OPTION IS CURRENTLY IN WAITLIST STATUS.

Images are a visual witness, giving form to the intangible values of a culture. Just as Christ contained, and yet was wholly God, created images and objects have the capacity to hold some of the beauty and truth of the Divine in physical form.

The high mountain desert of Santa Fe is a rich location to encounter the importance of place, and the people and built objects within it. I have been photographing the churches, cemeteries, and landscape of the high mountain desert for years, and will share these images as well as those of other professional digital photographers to help guide our work.

The focus of the course will be on captured content and how to use the ways and means of the digital camera to create meaningful work, without being overwhelmed by techno jargon, gizmos, and glitz. We will take several off-campus field trips together, bringing what we've captured back to the classroom to take it through the image adjustments/corrections process. Initial critiques will take place on monitors. Composition, lighting, focal point, and texture will be discussed with an eye toward how these shape visual communication, and how intangibles take physical presence in the visual language of photography (the binary code of digital images). Our best images will be printed on archival papers for a final discussion of the work.

A digital camera is required; laptops are recommended. Materials list: digital camera (bring your highest megapixel camera, SLR if available); image transfer or storage device such as memory stick, ipod, or external drive; laptop with image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop (laptop and software recommended). Optional: archival resume paper or inkjet papers for printing. There is a $30 lab fee for this workshop. Beginning photographers are welcome. Materials list available here.

Mixed Media Workshop

Barry Krammes

THIS OPTION IS CURRENTLY IN WAITLIST STATUS.

This course will focus on a variety of processes and methodologies. Through mixed-media techniques, we'll transform found objects into striking visual metaphors. Each participant will be asked to bring a variety of items, an eclectic assortment of art materials, and a small container, structure, or box in which to gather these disparate elements. Please consider contributing some materials to a shared collection of unrelated objects. Attendees will be encouraged to produce one finished mixed-media piece by week's end. There is a $20 lab fee for this workshop. Materials list available here.

Spiritual Writing Workshop

Ann McCutchan

THIS OPTION IS CURRENTLY IN WAITLIST STATUS.

Whether you are an essayist, memoirist, or theologically-oriented writer, this course focusing on personal narrative will offer you fresh approaches to developing spiritual material. Topics to be discussed include form, voice, and style, as well as composition tools and research that lends breadth and depth to work. We will support each other's efforts, honoring the notion that writing is not entirely solitary, but often a collaborative process. Expect to take risks; expect to be surprised. Advance reading assignments and more details to come. Please submit 15-20 pages by regular mail so that it arrives at the Image office by July 1 AND email the same pages to jmullins@imagejournal.org. (Excerpts from memoirs and autobiographies are welcome.) You will be sent your classmates' manuscripts by email, to print and bring with you to the workshop.

Drawing from Life and the Old Masters

Barry Moser

THIS OPTION IS CURRENTLY IN WAITLIST STATUS.

Drawing from life, both human and other forms, and copying the masters have been twin modes of learning how to draw (and how to draw better) for centuries. In this class we will do both. Using very simple and limited media, pencil, markers and the like, we will focus on life studies, from a simple egg to the full nude human form. In doing so we will study the figure work of the Old Masters (Rembrandt, Velasquez, etc.), tracing and copying their drawings as a means to finding our own way to understanding how to draw the figure—or the egg.

No previous experience is necessary or required. There is a $20 lab fee for this workshop. Materials list available here.

Songwriting Workshop

Over the Rhine

THIS OPTION IS CURRENTLY IN WAITLIST STATUS.

Musicians and music lovers of varying backgrounds and proficiency are welcome to participate in the songwriting workshop. (Participants are not obligated to sing or perform.) If you are interested in performing at the workshop, please submit a CD of three original songs, preferably recent works, to the Image office by June 1 to help the instructors prepare for class. Simple, sparse recordings are welcome. Workshop participants will be invited to perform acoustic versions of their material at the workshop (at the piano or with acoustic guitar). The rest of us will listen, discuss, and possibly help rework the songs presented. We will strive for camaraderie, laughter and the occasional surprising insight. Along with discussions of the songs presented, we will listen to recordings of notable songwriters of the last 100 years, and explore a wide range of topics related to music and words, writing and creativity, recording and performing. We will also attempt to do some songwriting and collaborating throughout the course of the week. There is a $30 lab fee for this workshop.

Seminar: “Everyone is Welcome!”

Art, the City, and the Beloved Community

Tim Rollins

THIS OPTION IS CURRENTLY IN WAITLIST STATUS.

Building upon over 25 years of working with youth in the South Bronx and other distressed neighborhoods worldwide, Tim Rollins will be conducting a seminar and art-making workshop using the art, music, literature, and poetry of the city as inspiration for dialogue, revelation, and creation. Rollins began working with underprivileged junior high school students in 1982, reading aloud to them as they drew freely. Students will explore the workshop theme through this collaborative technique. Sources will include the writings of St. Augustine, Dickens, and Kafka; the films of Pasolini and Italian neo-realist cinema; the late works of Mondrian; the greats of American urban jazz and gospel; the orchestrations of Gershwin and Bernstein; the poetry of Langston Hughes; the Harlem Renaissance and Hip Hop music; all culminating in the visionary communitarian oratory of Rev. M. L. King, Jr. There is a $20 lab fee for this workshop. Materials will be provided.

Fiction Workshop

Valerie Sayers

THIS OPTION IS CURRENTLY IN WAITLIST STATUS.

Our workshop will examine the ways that vision, belief, and narrative strategy inform contemporary fiction focusing on questions of faith. Every participant will submit one short story or novel excerpt in draft form (up to 6,000 words) for group discussion. Because we will focus our attention on the writer's aims for the piece, and on supporting each other's efforts to revise and reconsider, we will regard all the work submitted as “in progress” rather than as final product. We'll all have a chance to describe our fictional influences and aspirations, and we'll welcome a broad range of aesthetic approaches. So that we'll have a common body of literature to discuss in the context of our own work, we will also read and discuss one published story for each session; more details to come. Please send your draft story or novel excerpt by regular mail so that it arrives at Image office by July 1 AND email the same pages to jmullins@imagejournal.org. You will receive all the manuscripts by e-mail, to print out, read in advance, and bring with you to the workshop.

Playwriting and Screenwriting Workshop

Mark St. Germain

This workshop challenges anyone interested in storytelling through dialogue: seasoned script-writers looking to enhance their process, the fiction or nonfiction writer wanting to explore a new medium, and performing artists wanting to write. Whether you are a writer in the middle of a project, an artist waiting for inspiration, an actor wanting to explore, or someone who has always wanted to write, you already possess, deep inside you, everything you need to bring forth your unique voice. Through a series of exercises and by sharing our work with each other, our sessions will give you a roadmap to your subconscious and lead you to the wonder of the unconscious mind and the thrill of creation. We will explore the craft of writing and revision, from character development to dramatic action, style, stakes, and structure. You may bring a project in process or you can begin a new piece. Students working on film scripts are welcome; the class will focus on dialogue and dramatic story. Feedback is nonjudgmental, reflecting back to you what you have written, to demonstrate how to develop and deepen your work through your own choices, thus finding and maintaining your distinctive view and voice. If you are working on an existing play or screenplay, fully or partially written, or have a specific idea you'd like to explore, please submit these and a brief statement outlining your goals by regular mail to the Image office so that it arrives by July 1.

Poetry Workshop

Daniel Tobin

One of the attributes of good poetry is energy, a quality of language and expression that can take possession of a reader's attention and hold it for the length of the work. One way of accomplishing this is through intensity, a quality of concentration that can inform a poem's composition in a variety of ways. In the course of discussing workshop participants' poems with the usual critical attention, we will keep ourselves attuned to three kinds of intensity: rhythmic (including matters of prosody), formal, and narrative. At the same time we will make ourselves available to the rhetorical strategies poems use to achieve their effects. During the week we will examine strategies for making poems more intense. We will also look at exemplary poems from a variety of poets. Members of the workshop should submit five poems they want to workshop by regular mail so that they arrive at the Image office by July 1 AND email the same pages to jmullins@imagejournal.org. You will be sent all your classmates' manuscripts by email in July, to print and bring with you to the workshop. Additional handouts will be provided.

The Glen Workshop is held in collaboration with
Christians in the Visual Arts and Christians in the Theatre Arts

For more information, please write to:
Image, 3307 Third Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119.
Phone: (206) 281-2988. Or send us an e-mail.