Saturday June 28th, 10am - 4:00pm
with Jackie Lakely
Spend the day creating a series of pieces centered on the personal expression of Cairns. We most commonly know them as rock formations, although they have historically been made from a wide range of materials. They have served humanity over thousands of years as a means of communication, and connection, sharing route markers for explorers and hikers, holders of messages, to signify community, as a means of meditation, burial, and other rituals.
In the morning we will work with actual stones to build little cairns to work from, and create many papers with textures and markings as a basis for our mixed media rocks, while the instructor talks about cairns' history, personal experience seeing them out in the wilds of Scotland and Alaska (as recently as last month!). This will allow students time to connect to different approaches to creating their own personally meaningful cairns. In the afternoon we will create surfaces with contexts for our structures. While this is a project-specific workshop, techniques covered will include layered drawing and painting, gel plate printing, cutting out shapes and collaging them on a few different surfaces, creating textures using stencils, stamps and various tools, and touching on the importance of value differences and contrast, creating interesting grays and browns using your full range of colors, and composition.
Registration and Fees
Become a member of the Oak Park Art League and save on class registration.
Members: $120.00; after 6/24/2025: $125.00
Non-Members: $140.00; after 6/24/2025: $145.00
Advanced Registration Required.
Registration and Code of Conduct Policy
Materials:
Students are responsible for bringing the following supplies: your own acrylic paints in a range of colors plus black and white, liquid medium in satin or matte, brushes, pencils, erasers, any drawing tools you want to add such as colored pencils, chalk and oil pastels, pens, markers, charcoal, etc., paper towels, scissors and/or Xacto knife for cutting out shapes, smock or apron (mixed media is messy), and any personal collage materials, gels, pastes, stencils, stamps or other items you want to experiment with in this project. You are welcome to bring your own collected rocks and stones (and other items) to create your cairns to use as your visual samples.
Instructor will bring all papers and surfaces we will work on, gel plate and brayers, extra drawing tools of all kinds, collage papers, and various gels, stencils, stamps, and rocks, stones, and shells to create your personal visual cairns for the day. You are welcome to bring a lunch and have a break from 12:30-1:00
About the instructor: