Who are you? What are the important ideas and symbols that express your wishes, dreams, and everyday life? From Ancient Egypt to modern times, man has used art to record his identity through portraits, self-portraits, and symbols. In this workshop, students use a mixed-media approach, including monoprint, chine colle, collage, and stamping, to construct a self-portrait that captures their identity and puts it on display. No drawing experience necessary!
Request ProgramVisual and Performing Arts Programs
VMFA visual and performing arts programs are designed to stimulate greater community involvement in art education and to provide opportunities for individuals to work closely with noted professional artists. These artists have been selected for the merit of their work, their serious commitment to professional excellence, their teaching experience, and their communication skills. The wide variety of workshops allows the VMFA partner the flexibility to schedule programs that meet specific audience needs and satisfy different levels of skill and/or experience. See Booking Visual Arts Workshops and Performances for information about requesting a workshop or performance
Mobile Glass Studio
Share the unique experience of glass blowing — even add an educational component to exhibitions —with this mobile hot-glass studio, created by artist Ryan Gothrup. This studio can be used for lectures, demonstrations, workshops, or multiple-day residencies.
Request ProgramLooking at Our Lives: A Tile Mural Workshop
n the venerable tradition of landscape, farm, and animal paintings that are featured prominently in the Mellon collection, artist Beryl Solla encourages students to think about the people and things that give their own lives meaning and value. Students identify common ideas and develop images that best represent them. Using broken tile and quick-setting thin set, students design and install a small broken tile mural (approx. 3′ x 4′) in their school or community center. The installation includes designing the mural, drawing it on the wall, breaking the tile (using protective glasses), and placing the tile on the wall. The tile is then grouted and cleaned. A highly decorative and imaginative frame (also made from broken tile) that reflects the aesthetics of the Mellon collection and supports their own concepts surrounds the image(s). The mural is permanent, beautiful, and maintenance-free.
Request ProgramClay Animation Moviemakers
This workshop is for anyone who has ever wanted to make a movie! Students learn the steps used by the pros to go from character creation to construction — and sometimes destruction. Using real animator’s clay, students sculpt original characters, design sets, and work together in small groups to make a three-minute animated movie with sound character voices. Who says a movie can’t be made in a day?
Request ProgramAbstract Mixed Media
Looking to the “father of modern art,” Wassily Kandinsky, and comparing him to 21st-century artists Julie Mehretu, and “Stadia III,” students explore lyrical expression and measured marks as they apply to abstract art. Using a variety of traditional and nontraditional materials as well as a mini-psychological profile and music, students create large-scale works of geometric and organic origin.
Request ProgramThe Sound of Sound: Experiments in the Art of Sound
Dive into the sound of sound: Break the boundaries of art, music, and performance, and discover a wide range of possibilities that are right before your ears. This workshop begins with a series of experiments that immerse participants in the world of sound. Students participate in a sound scavenger hunt and improvisational sounding as well as make sound with found objects. The workshop reaches a crescendo with participants creating sound events that may take many forms, such as a performance using found objects or an interactive sound sculpture.
Request ProgramEnvironmental Art
Rediscover and re-enchant your world. This workshop begins with a series of exercises that heighten awareness and appreciation of the environment. Building on this awareness, participants are encouraged to develop a playful interaction with their surroundings and create art installations using only materials found in the environment. Past art installations have taken many forms, including interactive installations, sound sculptures, art performances, and (where there’s water) floating sculptures. This outdoor workshop can be held in a park, on school grounds, or in any other such public space.
Request ProgramThe People’s Library
The People’s Library is a highly collaborative, sustainable and interactive public art project. Using books that would otherwise be thrown away, community members are coming together to design and build a library that can include all of our histories. During the workshop participants will make paper from the recycled books, silk screen title pages and bind the new paper to create blank books. Participants will then have the chance to author their own book which, when finished, will become part of the Main Branch of the Richmond Public Library’s permanent collection. Once finished, the books can be checked out by anyone in the community creating a real and symbolic meeting place for our diverse state. The workshop will begin with a twenty minute presentation about the project, its inspirations, and the permanent installation of the work.
Request ProgramWhat a Relief: How Prints are Made
Join artist and the Thomas C. Gordon Jr. Director of the VMFA Studio School Mary Holland as she shares examples of original relief prints from her extensive print collection. She will also show the step-by-step process of image design, transfer, carving the plate, inking the plate, and printing. The history of relief prints, the oldest method of the printmaking processes, will be covered. This is a great lecture/demonstration for students, artists, and people who want to learn more about how art is created.
Enrollment limit: 20
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