Technique | Shelburne Museum

Technique explores the methods and materials of makers. Tune in to learn more about the techniques used by different artists across a multitude of mediums, and discover their tips and tricks along the way.

MARIA SHELL

Maria Shell’s work is grounded in the tradition and craft of American quilt making. She strives to take the classical components of a traditional bedquilt and manipulate them with the hope of creating surprising combinations of pattern, repetition, and color for the viewer.

Maria is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation 2011 Winter Award, a Rasmuson Foundation Project Award and two Rasmuson Fellowships (2009, 2013, 2017). She has had several solo and small group shows including fiber at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Ohio, Right Lines & Circles at the Ormond Beach Memorial Art Museum and Gardens in Ormond Beach, Florida, Line + Shape at the Hello Stitch Studio in Berkeley, California, and The Pieced Canvas at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego, California. Her most recent solo exhibition is Off the Grid which was on view at the Shelburne Art Museum in Shelburne, Vermont from May—October 2022. Her first book Improv Patchwork—Dynamic Quilts Made with Line & Shape was published in 2017. You can see more of Maria’s work on her website http://mariashell.com or learn more about her process by visiting her blog http://talesofastitcher.com.

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HOW TO PIECE A TRADITIONAL QUILT BLOCK IN AN IMPROVISATIONAL MANNER

Join Maria Shell: Off the Grid featured artist for a step by step tutorial on how to piece a traditional quilt block with improvisational techniques.

NANCY WINSHIP MILLIKEN

Defining her sculpture as “contemporary pastoralism,” Milliken is inspired by our age-old relationship to nature as a way to consider ecological questions in the present. She creates environmental and site-specific sculptures in both urban and rural settings using natural materials like sheep’s wool or earth/clay from pasture fields surrounding the studio. Her design is based around the principle of keeping materials close to their original state with the goal of transforming the viewer, not the materials. The sculptures interact with the environment and are activated by ephemeral forces such as wind, rain, and sun, calling attention to the textures, odors, and movement of natural materials composed in formally simple structures. The work ultimately addresses complex issues involved in sustainable living. Much of the work is made in collaboration with farmers, artisans, poets and environmental studies students from universities all over the nation. The studio culture creates the space and time for mentoring creative environmental leadership.

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MAKING, MATERIALS, & MESSAGE NANCY WINSHIP MILLIKEN: VARIED AND ALIVE

Join Nancy Winship Milliken: Varied and Alive featured artist to explore her artistic practice, materials, and message. This is the first video in a three-part series exploring the work of Nancy Winship Milliken Studio and her creative team.

INSTALLATION CONSIDERATIONS: PLACE, PARTNERS, MATERIALS & TEMPORALITY

Join Nancy Winship Milliken: Varied and Alive featured artist to explore the installation considerations for her outdoor sculptures, with a focus on place, partners, materials, and temporality. This is the second video in a three-part series exploring the work of Nancy Winship Milliken – stay tuned for part three coming in August!

COMMUNITY, COLLABORATION, AND IMPACT

Join Nancy Winship Milliken: Varied and Alive featured artist to explore the collaborations and community partnerships crucial to planning, fabricating, and installing her monumental sculptures. This is the final video in a three-part series looking behind-the-scenes at the work of Nancy Winship Milliken and her team of collaborators.

NAFIS WHITE

Nafis White is an interdisciplinary, multihyphenate artist whose recent body of works are created from objects commonly found in beauty supply stores, industrial sites and the seemingly limitless horizons of our global and political landscapes. Through weaving, hairdressing, sculpture and installation, White centers the uncanny audacity of self- affirmation and love by means of repetition as a form of change. White is inspired by raw materials and their transformative properties and abilities to tell dynamic stories when in congress. White’s formal training is in sculpture, printmaking and digital media. She uses concept as anchor and medium as message in her work moving within conceptual and durational realms. Community engagement, beauty and the political root deep in White’s work.

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THE MAKING OF OCULUS

Join New England Now: People featured artist, Nafis White, to explore the process of creating her sculptural Oculus series work for the exhibition.

SAMMY CHONG

Sammy Chong is an interdisciplinary artist who practices in drawing and painting. Chong has an academic background in philosophy and theology and obtained his MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2012). Chong has exhibited in the US and in South America. He teaches studio art courses at Boston College, including Portraiture, Figure Drawing and Figure Painting. Through his art practice, Chong explores issues related to social identity, he states, “in a time when cultural bias is not only informing political discourse but, more damagingly, affecting people’s views of others, especially the vulnerable”. Tapping into surrealist aesthetics, Chong’s artwork juxtaposes the conventional and the grotesque, the banal and the mysterious, the real and the imagined.

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THE MAKING OF THE “THEM” SERIES

Join New England Now: People featured artist Sammy Chong to learn about his process creating “THEM” Series multi-media works.

ANNU PALAKUNNATHU MATTHEW

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s photo-based artwork is a striking blend of still and moving imagery. Her work draws on archival photographs as a source of inspiration to re-examine historical narratives and colonization’s legacies. Matthew’s recent solo exhibitions include the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and sepiaEYE, NYC. Matthew has also exhibited her work at the RISD Museum, Newark Art Museum, MFA Boston, San Jose Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts (TX), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2018 Fotofest Biennial, 2009 Guangzhou Photo Biennial as well as at the Smithsonian. She has an upcoming mid-career retrospective at the Newport Art Museum in the Fall of 2021. Grants and fellowships that have supported her work include a MacColl Johnson, John Guttman, two Fulbright Fellowships, and grants from the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts. In addition, she has been an artist in residence at Civitella Ranieri, Lightwork, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is a Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island and was the Director of the Center for the Humanities from 2013-2019, and the 2015-17 Silvia-Chandley Professor of Nonviolence and Peace Studies and is represented by sepiaEYE, New York City.

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PHOTOGRAPHY, STAGING, & EDITING: THE MAKING OF AN INDIAN FROM INDIA

Join New England Now: People featured artist, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, to learn about her artistic process in creating the photographic series An Indian from India.

CORINNE RHODES

Corinne Rhodes is a printmaker and the founder of Cherry Press, a printmaking and arts workshop located in Rutland, Massachusetts focused on preserving and furthering the art of traditional lithography, while embracing new, safer and less toxic techniques. Rhodes studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, the University of New Mexico, and Tamarind Institute of Lithography. She teaches non-toxic Century Plate lithography, traditional lithography and other printmaking techniques at Cherry Press, Bennington College and EFA-Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and RISD. Rhodes has taught Century Plate demonstrations and workshops at Brandeis University, Rhode Island College, RISD, Zea Mays Printmaking and elsewhere. Rhodes exhibits her work nationally and internationally, and has been the recipient of multiple grants, and recently published Cherry Press: Century Plate Lithography Part 1 in July 2019.

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CHAPTER 1: TRADITIONAL STONE LITHOGRAPHY

Join printmaker Corinne Rhodes for an exploration of traditional stone lithography. Learn about the methods and materials used in this process, and see some examples of traditional stone lithography in Revisiting America: The Prints of Currier & Ives.

CHAPTER 2: NON-TOXIC CENTURY PLATE LITHOGRAPHY

Join printmaker Corinne Rhodes for an examination of century plate lithography. Learn about the methods and materials used in this contemporary and non-toxic alternative to traditional stone lithography.

PETER KIRKILES

Sculptor Peter Kirkiles plays with the scale and materials of everyday objects. Whether an exact replica of an antique tall clock made in weathering steel, a measuring rule enlarged ten times its normal size, or a Studebaker truck shrunken down to the dimensions of a toy, his sculptures invite us to view the familiar in new and unexpected ways. The artist’s appreciation of the formal qualities of useful objects such as hand tools is evident in the detail and precision of his sculptures and their individual component parts. “I’m a maker; I’m also an admirer of things well made. Over the years, I’ve chosen to make things that I love. I find the subjects of my sculpture in real life; a shoe, a camera, a clock, a ruler…made to a scale that is one-to-one, it’s human scale.” –Peter Kirkiles

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HOW TO SAND CAST ALUMINUM

Join sculptor Peter Kirkiles for a demonstration on sand casting aluminum. Learn about the intricacies of casting molten metal and see Red Whisk (2021) come to life. View more of Peter’s work in our featured exhibition At Scale, on view June 2 – October 17, 2021.

HOPE JOHNSON

Hope Johnson has been a professional gardener for fifteen years and an artist all of her life. She began quilting in 1984 and created her studio, Vermont Quilt Bee, where she works independently and also collaborates with local Vermont craftswomen in the design and creation of fiber art and quilts with a focus on the honey bee and hive geometry. Hope started publicly showing her quilts in 2001 at a solo quilt exhibit at Shelburne Museum’s Celebration of the Seasons event. She has exhibited locally at quilt shows, public libraries, honey bee themed events, as well as beekeepers conferences and seminars in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ontario, Canada.

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HOW TO PIECE A HEXAGON FLOWER

Join quilt artist Hope Johnson for a demonstration on hexagon flower piecing. Learn how to lay out and piece the hexagon flower motifs featured in Hope’s work and the work of Jane Morton Cook as featured in Pattern and Purpose.

JOE CUNNINGHAM

Joe Cunningham has been a professional quilt artist since 1979. Joe began making quilts in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, and eventually moved to San Francisco where he maintains a gallery/studio. He has written essays on quilting for museum catalogues, books, and magazines and has given lectures and quilt making workshops nationally. His quilts are in the permanent collections of the DeYoung museum, Shelburne Museum, The Newark Museum, The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and many private collections. His latest book, “Man Made Quilts: Civil War to the Present,” is available for purchase here.

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CREATING UNIQUE BIAS TAPE AND HOW TO DESIGN WITH IT

Join quilt artist Joe Cunningham to learn about bias tape as a design element in quilt making. Joe demonstrates how to make and adhere unique bias tape. View Joe’s work The Rule of Three in the virtual exhibition Pattern and Purpose.