Summer Courses

Advanced Photography: alternative approaches to printing

summer session III

Credit hours: 3--Contact hours: 90

Dept: Art and Design

Instructor: Michael Barnes

Course Description: This course will integrate photographic image making with the medium of printmaking to expand and explore the possibilities of photographic image development in a multi-media environment.

A variety of photo and digital based printmaking techniques (high and low-tech) will be introduced as alternative means of printing photographic images to present new methods of layering and manipulating images along with and beyond that of traditional photographic and digital printing. The techniques introduced will incorporate textural and hand-drawn elements with an array of multiple-color and multiple-image layering possibilities.

These approaches will be further applied with a focus on concept and serial image development utilizing an expanded vocabulary of format and presentation. .

Some of the primary techniques that will be introduced:
Solarplates
Xerox Print / Laserprint roll-ups
Screen-printing based methods:
Photo Collagraph
Photo Etching
Polyester Plates (Pronto or Smart plates)

Instructor: Michael Barnes: is currently an Associate Professor of art and Head of the Printmaking program at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. He earned his BFA from Alma College, Michigan in 1991 and his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1996, both with a focus on Printmaking. Further studies include a summer Lithography workshop at the Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has also held residencies at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium, The Bemis Center of Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota, and an upcoming residency at Anchor Graphics @ Columbia College in Chicago.

He has exhibited internationally in over 100 competitive group exhibitions since 1996, including exhibitions in Great Britian, Ireland, Wales, Poland, Taiwan, Estonia, Japan, Romania, Finland, and the Republic of Macedonia. His solo exhibitions include Street Level Gallery Highwood, Illinois; the OIA - Gallery, New York City; Anchor Graphics, Chicago; and Cervini Haas Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona.

His recent group exhibitions include “The Art of Democracy”, Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago; “Prints Now!”, Davidson Galleries, Seattle; “Bookplates”, Printworks, Chicago; "Drawing VII", Koplin Del Rio Gallery, West Hollywood; "Outlaw Printmakers", and "New Prints", International Print Center, New York.

The city of Florence provides the backdrop to this intensive workshop, and there is frequent class time outside the studio in which to work on-site. The city itself - rich in history as the epicenter of the Italian Renaissance - is resplendent with some of the world's finest museums and monuments. The hill towns of Settingnano and Fiesole are only fifteen minutes away by car or bus and provide breathtaking panoramic views of the city from which the group will work. Two half-day guided walking tours of Florence, and an additional one of Siena, are included in the course and provide further opportunity for on-site work.