Cut It Out!
September 21 – 23, 2023
Cutting through, making the cut, a cut above
Facilitator: Barbara Bushey
Guest Speaker: Leah Wong
In Depth Presenters: Laurel Izard, Donalee Kennedy
Hampton Inn & Suites
Columbus University Area
3160 Olentangy River Road
Columbus, OH
The highlight of the retreat will be a lecture and workshop by Leah L. Wong born in Qingdao, China. Leah received her BFA in oil painting from the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, China and earned her MFA in painting from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. She currently lives and works in Columbus, Ohio.
Leah takes inspirations from nature, light, plants, and mirrored reflections in water. She combines drawings and cutouts with multiple layers that increase the visual complexity and experience. From multiple perspectives, her cutout and display layouts bring forth mental landscapes that are incorporated into specific sites. Light and shadows add depth to energize viewers’ visual experience, which can be spiritual, psychological, and/or optical.
Both abstractly and metaphorically, Leah’s two- and three-dimensional forms are suspended between concepts and imaginations of time and space. You may remember Leah’s work from the Riffe gallery show earlier this year.
In the course of the workshop, Leah will demonstrate her technique for working with paint and cutouts. (We’ll be working a little smaller than some of her impressive works!) Facilitator Barbara Bushey will also lead us in a number of drawing exercises, intended to get us focused, relaxed, and ready to create. If you have always been nervous about drawing, let your fear go! These exercises will give you a new way to think about drawing.
One of our new members, Donalee Kennedy, has graciously offered to take on the responsibility of meal planning for this retreat! We are so happy she has decided to jump in with both feet!
Reminder: at the Spring retreat, we decided that we wanted to spend more time actually using Saturday afternoon to be together. To that end, we have an assortment of activities planned for Saturday afternoon, along with Saturday lunch and dinner. Plan on sticking around for the entire event.
We will of course have time for member share, as well as in-depth presentations from Laurel Izard and Donalee Kennedy. And plenty of time to interact with all of you!
Special thanks to Kate Gorman and Gwen Surratt for getting Leah to be our presenter for this workshop.