CLASSES & WORKSHOPS

The Blanton Museum's education department organizes a word game inviting visitors to the museum to write words on the chalkboards.

Brooklyn-based, internationally exhibiting and former WorkSpace artist Lisi
Raskin returns to the Blanton to play her artwork Able Archer '83. http://awp.diaart.org/raskin/

Sam Gosling, personality/social psychologist and
author of Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You joins Anna Craycroft for a
 conversation. 
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/HomePage/Faculty/Gosling/index.htm

Artist Anna Craycroft leads a special book club discussion for children and
adults on books by Gregory Bateson, Paul Chan, R. Buckminster Fuller, and
Bruno Munari.

Invited artists have twenty images and five minutes each to introduce their work. Get to know twenty-five emerging contemporary artists from Austin and Virginia Commonwealth University in under two hours.

Marjorie Woods, Professor, department of English
 Senior Seminar: student presentation on The Book of Margery Kempe.

Artist New York-based artist Jessica Dickinson leads a drawing workshop for both children and adults. No artistic background necessary for this exercise in creating freely.www.jessicadickinson.com

Judith Jellison, Mary D. Bold Regents Professor of Music and Distinguished Teaching Professor, school of music Steel drum session and conversation

Lisa Bedore, associate professor, department of communication sciences and disorders
 meeting with graduate students to discuss issues related to bilingualism and language disorders in the context of treatment in schools

Anita Lewis, educator at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually
 Impaired, leads a workshop on the deaf-blind experience in the classroom. www.tsbvi.edu

Marjorie Woods, Professor, department of English
Plan II, Reading and Composition in World Literature class: discussion of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore

Katie Dawson, Lecturer, Department of Theatre and Dance

Aaron Gemill and Rob Seward of Ex Corporation discuss the idea of automated (i.e. robotic) writing, teaching, learning and evaluation. Joining ExCorp will be UT researchers and affiliates Maria Esteva, Professor Justin Hodgson; and Professor Bruce Porter. www.robotpedagogue.com

We're doomed! Eat Cake! Austin-based copywriter and founder of Apocalypse Cakes, Shannon O'Malley presents tips for developing and marketing your ideas. For O'Malley these ideas tend to involve Apocalypse-themed cakes.http://apocalypsecakes.wordpress.com

Artist Jill Magid presents a lecture about autofictions. In keeping with the topic, Austin-based performer Stephen Low will perform Jill Magid. www.jillmagid.com

Artist, writer and educator Mary Walling Blackburn brings two classes from her experimental school, The Anhoek School, to the exhibition. Substitute teachers Katie Anania and Claire Ruud will lead the classes. www.anhoekschool.org

Allison Myers leads a class on basic principles of design using artist and educator Josef Albers’s Werklehre—design with material—techniques from the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College.  Activities include construction exercises in paper to encourage intuitive understanding and constructive thinking about material and space.

Artist Sam Sanford leads a workshop on Zen meditation and offers some remarks on the relationship between meditation and art.  Meditation is a way to practice detaching awareness from the ongoing stream of internal noise to allow new perspectives and insights to emerge from unconscious levels of the mind.

A summer camp titled “Summer in the City.” Over twenty students and instructors worked freely between both gallery spaces. While groups of students worked on their improv scenes in one room, other groups could write in a quieter setting next door. On the final day, all students participated in a scavenger hunt was in order. This hunt had the students use clues to try and locate different works of art through the galleries. 

Special office hours with Risa Puleo, The Blanton’s assistant curator of contemporary art and the curator of Workspace: Anna Craycroft. Talk to an art expert!

Join in a discussion of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon with members of the Young Austin Women’s Literary Society and clinical faculty member Ann Brown from the UT Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.  

Grab your knitting needles and crochet hooks and share your love of fiber arts with Austin’s local knitting/crocheting meet-up group, The Knotty Knitters.  Beginners are welcome.

Acclaimed percussionist and composer Nick Hennies, in association with Church of the Friendly Ghost, will share with visitors an array of cowbells, drums, snares and triangles in a workshop that will explore instrument resonances, acoustic space, and aural immersion, culminating in a group performance on the vibraphone. 

 Graduate of the Michener Institute and widely published poet S.E. Smith takes the mystery out of contemporary poetry. Beginning with Frank O’Hara’s poem, “Why I am not a painter” SE leads a tour of the gallery to some of O’Hara’s favorite artists. The event concludes with a poetry workshop 

The cast of The Encyclopedia Show produces creative performances centered on themes taken from actual encyclopedias. For their program at The Blanton, they will host a School Days themed reading series with poetry, song, fiction, and perhaps a game of Heads Up 7-Up. 

Dig up your best (or worst) essays and book reports! Local artist Katelyn Wood hosts “What I Knew,” an open mic session in which visitors can share their writings from grammar school to grad school. Bring your notebook, number two pencils, and all you thought you knew.

Workspace artist Anna Craycroft leads visitors in a pedagogical drawing technique which translates the personal narratives of their classroom experiences into a coded system of colorful abstract shapes. The workshop adapts the methodologies of healer/artist Emma Kunz and revolutionary pedagogues Freidrich Froebel and Johann Henireich Pestalozzi.