World Collage Day Morning Session
Adult Course | Registration opens 4/1/2025 7:00 AM MST
In celebration of World Collage Day, join ASLD collage & mixed media faculty artists:
Robin Whatley: hands-on collage making session. With 4 different prompts to choose from, we will explore various color combinations and theme orientated designs that can be finished day of or completed at home. A demo on glue methods and collage making materials will also be provided.
Deb Rosenbaum: demo collage making skills: cutting, pasting and the use of disparate elements to create quirky characters and fun narratives.
Mark Friday: will show examples of three dimensional collages and do demos that will show ways to push a primarily two dimensional medium into more sculptural forms. He will have materials on hand, so that those interested, can create their own 3-D collages.
Behnaz Ahmadian: will demonstrate and discuss the process of creating a mixed media collage project and welcome students to join in and create their own collage.
- All supplies provided: featuring wide array of several decades worth of LIFE magazines and National Geographic magazines - some dating back to the 1940s & 1950s!
Robin Whatley
www.robinwhatley.com
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is a reflection and reinterpretation of pop culture from the 50's, 60's, and 70's combined with a reimagined culture of today. For my mixed media paintings, I integrate magazine cut-outs with water-based paints to create 'other worldly' landscapes. For my collage series, I combine vintage magazine cut-outs on paper to create surreal, dreamy vignettes. These works are meant to reveal a deeper underlying psychological theme, feeling, or political statement that transcends time.
ARTIST BIO
As a Denver based artist with a background in arts administration, Robin has worked for the last 18 years as a freelance professional artist. After receiving a BFA with a concentration in painting from Colorado State University, she relocated to Denver in 2003 to further grow her art career. Robin’s work has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions around the US including Arizona, California, Colorado, Rhode Island, Florida and Washington. Today, Robin continues to push her artistic boundaries and explore new creative processes from her at home studio in Denver.
Behnaz Ahmadian
Behnaz Ahmadian was born in Iran and raised in the United States. She is currently living and working in Colorado. She is an artist and an art instructor. She likes to work with many different mediums but the main medium she works with, is acrylic. Behnaz is very fascinated with pattern and color and incorporates them in her paintings.
Behnaz grew up in the family of creatives and had always loved art and being creative as a child. Behnaz is a self-taught artist always making art as a child in her spare time. She obtained her bachelors degree in Biology wanting to go into medicine but her love for art and design made her pursue her career in interior design. While working as an interior designer, she was led to create unique paintings full time. Her sense of color and pattern creates pieces that are truly unique which she drew from her experience as a designer. Her designs are recognized for their vibrant colors, details and patterns.
Behnaz’s mother has been her true inspiration. Her mom has now passed but with each piece that she creates, she hopes to share the feeling of love and joy that her mom worked so hard to nurture in her as a woman, artist and designer. Now painting each piece is like a journey that takes Behnaz back to when she was introduced to art and fabrics with color and patterns through her mom who was a fashion designer. Her mother was the one who taught her how to draw and always encouraged her to be creative and incorporate meaning into her every piece.
As an artist, Behnaz also loves to draw and capture the unique characters of animals because they are so special and bring meaning to those who love their pets.
Mark Friday
A printmaker and graphic artist, Friday's whimsical prints can be seen in the corporate collections of Kaiser Permanente and Qwest. His work was included in several group exhibitions, as well as in a solo exhibition at the O'Sullivan Gallery at Regis University. Teaching Philosophy: My teaching philosophy is to provide students with the necessary tools and information that will allow them to successfully create art. I work with them from the general to the specific, starting with an explanation of the particular art form, historical background if necessary, and plenty of examples of actual work. This is followed by appropriate demonstrations of processes and techniques. Most importantly, I enjoy working with students individually on their particular projects, helping them solve problems and giving suggestions, all in a relaxed and fun atmosphere. Artist Statement: I enjoy bouncing around from medium to medium and style to style because my work is a lot about experimentation and invention. I go back and forth between working with the object and working with the image. I also like to blur the boundaries between media, create interactive works of art, and work with other artists in collaborations. When all said and done, I like my work to be thought of as clever, whimsical, fun, and sometimes eye dazzling. Some influences are: architecture, both refined and shabby; science fact and fiction; antiquity; pop art and folk art; and the works of others. The unpredictable and unique nature of found or discarded materials offers an exciting challenge for art making.
Deb Rosenbaum
A Denver Native, Deb Rosenbaum is a professional artist with extensive art instruction experience including fifteen years as Visual Arts Director at Denver School of the Arts. Her humorous and quirky work in collage, printmaking, and sculpture reflects her passion for story telling and collecting, combining disparate materials. She currently serves as a Board member and faculty at the Art Students League of Denver.
debrosenbaum.com