Six-week spring classes are now open for registration!
Click here to download brochure with testimonials!
FOR NEW ARTISTS Saturdays, 1 - 3 pm: March 27, April 3, 10, 17, 24, May 1
FOR PRACTICING ARTISTS Tuesdays, 7 - 9 pm: March 30, April 6, 13, 20, 27, May 4
Classes $250 per six-week session. All materials provided. Limited to eight students.
A deposit of $50 holds your space; refundable by March 17. After March 17, you may apply the deposit to a future class or donate it to Doctors Without Borders.
On-site classes available Private group classes at your chosen location.
Email for scheduling and rates. Minimum four students.
Private in-studio classes To schedule a private group at the studio, email for scheduling and rates. Minimum four students.
Questions? ellen@ellenziegler.com
Class 101: FOR NEW ARTISTS
Overcome those internal messages – “I’m not an artist”, “I’m no good at it”, “I can’t draw a straight line” – and find your individual artistic voice.
• Discover your innate creativity through exploring physiological and psychological connections between hand and eye.
• Exercises in basic line, color, and form combine with reflections on personal imagery.
• Playing/working with a wealth of materials replaces negative messages with positive experience.
• You’ll take away with you a commitment to becoming the artist you already are, as well as new habits of artmaking that you can build on daily.
• Begin the practice of keeping a visual journal – your ongoing investigation into your personal creative vocabulary.
Hand in hand with the joy of artmaking comes the challenge of... THE CREATIVE BLOCK %+#
Working with materials takes us out of our heads and into the flow of process. Define and refine your personal vision through the practice of keeping a visual journal – this is the single most valuable method I have found for supporting creative practice.
• the potency of line and color
• off-the-press printmaking techniques to transfer personal imagery into journal format
• incorporating type and text
• the emotional and visual power of page layout
• gluing and fastening for all occasions
• the More is More Theory of collage
• a weekly overview of international work
No matter how much we love our jobs, the daily routine of work – the repetition, stress, and workload – can sometimes bog us down. When this happens, talented professionals can lose sight of the creative spark that resides at the core of every successful business. A WD-40 for the Creative Soul workshop will bring renewed vigor to your workplace, infusing participants with a vital sense of enthusiasm and creativity. This stimulating “mind spa” creates the confidence to look at problems and challenges from different angles, to try new approaches, and to work with a light touch.
Corporate workshops include a broad range of activities and explorations:
• Sharpen conceptual skills and build confidence with creative practices. These include visual and writing exercises that derail habitual approaches to problem-solving.
• Explore habitual states of mind and how to break out of them. We’ll do exercises to understand more about where our creativity might lie hidden and how to get to it — techniques that will un-stick us when we’re stuck.
• Support creative activity with awareness. Integrating the body and the mind brings relaxation and alertness.
• Address negative attitudes toward the things that challenge us. Private investigation using contemplation and writing will yield insights that can stimulate daily work. Sharing these insights strengthens team cohesiveness.
• Connect the hand and eye as one perceptual tool. Seeing is something we take for granted. Awareness of vision reminds us to see clearly, and think in a fresh way.
• Learn to keep a visual journal that records perceptions and predilections – a powerful and personal tool for defining vision and transferring personal insight into productive creativity in whatever you do.
The ultimate goal: to instill an inner process that delivers value long after the workshop is finished.
Ziegler recently gave a WD-40 workshop for the high-potential leadership group of managers at Real Networks in Seattle. At Coldwater Creek’s Sandpoint, Idaho headquarters, she led a three-day intensive for 56 designers and photographers. At her studio, she gave private seminars for a consortium of national museum curators and administrators and for corporate decision makers and learning and development specialists.
References on request.Click here for a Corporate Workshop PDF brochure.To schedule a corporate workshop, contact Ellen at ellen@ellenziegler.com.
Bio:
Ellen Ziegler is active as a teacher, lecturer and mentor as part of her commitment to community. She works with university art majors at the BFA and MFA level. She’s taught classes for recovering cancer patients and for at-risk youth in the public schools. and teaches the WD-40 series of classes at her studio and on-site at art centers and private homes. Ziegler has also developed a popular and successful creativity/team-building training workshop for corporations, small businesses and institutions.
Her strengths as a teacher of corporate workshops include her experience as the principal of Ellen Ziegler Design, a nationally recognized graphic design firm based in Seattle.
She has taught at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, University of Washington, Seattle Central Community College, Cornish College of the Arts, the School of Visual Concepts, the Seattle Public School System, Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, Coupeville Arts Center on Whidbey Island, and Tara Mandala Retreat Centers in Pagosa Springs, Colorado and Whidbey Island, Washington. Her teaching is informed by over twenty years of meditation practice.
Ellen Ziegler’s art explores the psychological import of symbols, stories and uncommon materials. She works in drawing, sculpture, and environmental installations incorporating water as subject and medium. She has built public and private commissions in the Northwest and California, including three water features, inspired by a fellowship in Rome studying aqueducts and fountains.
Ziegler is represented by In Lieu Exhibit Space and by SOIL Gallery in Seattle. Her work is in numerous public and private collections. She is the recipient of a Fellowship from the Northwest Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in Italy (NIAUSI), an Artist Trust Fellowship, and grants from Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and the King County 4Culture program, and has won awards for her public work in collaboration with architectural and design firms. In 2009, she participated in Antony Gormley’s One and Other in London, with a one-hour interactive performance in Trafalgar Square.
“The work is remembering to play.”
Deborah Hay
WD-40® is a registered trademark of the WD-40 Corporation.