Dia de los Muertos

In any given day, we may feel the power and experience the pleasure of altering our thoughts and emotions as we art journal. This day is a good day to do just that as the vivid and moving ’Day of the Dead’ festivities are underway. Dia de los Muertos is a three-day Mexican holiday (starts on Halloween) honoring and celebrating loved ones who have passed on. We can turn sadness, death, and grief, into lively celebrations of life, sweet memories, and visual monuments. The same power and pleasure are felt when we inject life into what sometimes seems to be ’dead’ objects, when we provide newness to ’things’ that were once enjoyed. In this workshop we’ll do both. We’ll adorn the cover of an altered book with a collage that is commemorating, honoring, and celebrating the dead. We’ll dedicate our journal to a time, a friendship, a deep soul connection we once had, but have lost. We will then use other salvaged objects, old architectural hardware, a drawer knob, a closet handle, etc., and affix them onto our altered book to further emphasize our capacity to alter our stance on loss. If time permits we will advance our subject onto the pages of our new journals. We will practice our power to change a heavy heart, to lighten up.

Supply List

• Images reminiscent of the ’dead’ (pictures, old letters, ephemera, etc.)
• Favorite art materials and tools (pens, markers, tape, scissors, etc.)
• Painting supplies (a few color acrylic paints, brushes, palette, cup for water, etc.)
• Matte gel medium (or any decoupage medium)
• White Gesso
• Thin sand paper
• Blow dryer
• Strong glue (to hold metal or wooden 3-D details)
• Acrylic matte varnish
  
  Teacher will bring:
• Pre-scroll-sawn old books
• Architectural salvage yard finds
• Misc. images and ephemera