WORKSHOP “Pretty Vial Things” with Michael deMeng

When I was a kid I loved the idea of magic potions. Remember how Alice drank from the bottle to become very very tall, and of course Dr. Jekyll turned into his hairy eye-browed buddy Mr. Hyde the same way…different recipe apparently. There must be some very interesting mojo in those little containers …some good…some not so good. In this class we are not going to be making the elixirs (that might be illegal in some states) but rather we are going to be designing the little bottles that house these strange liquids. We will be using various assemblage techniques to create some pretty vial things; part of the fun is deciding what they are going to hold and coming up with the appropriate housing. Whether it for turning into hairy monsters (which comes in handy), a potion for invisibility (also very handy), or a place to store the water from the fountain of youth (send me two right away), the containers will be as rich and strange as the contents. Down the hatch!

WORKSHOP ‘Island of deMented Toys‘ with Michael deMeng

Remember the Island of Misfit Toys in the claymation epic “Rudolph the Red NosedReindeer”. Well that’s nothing compared to what we’re going to do in this class. You’re going to bring all sorts of parts and pieces from a variety of toys. You round up everything from Barbies ,to Tonka trucks, to snow globes, to wind-up zeppelins, and reassemble them “into something rich and strange” (to quote Shakespeare’s The Tempest). Don’t worry if you toys aren’t dismantled yet…we can take care of that…bwwwwahahahahahaha (evil laugh – in case you were wondering). Using various techniques of assemblage we will turn our classroom in to a laboratory of the weird. Barbie and Ken will never be the same….as I said before ….bwwwwahahahaha.