Schedule

Photography, Collage & Loosening Up Creativity

Artists’ Retreat & Workshop in Tuscany, Italy

With optional add-on excursions to Florence & Venice

Location

Just 45 minutes from Florence in the beautiful Casentino area of the Tuscan countryside, our workshop with artists Meredith & Dotti will take place on a hilltop estate overlooking castles and a picturesque valley of farms. Our luxury villa has 4 bedrooms with private bathrooms and a large kitchen, dining room, and living room with a fireplace. The spacious grounds have sculptures scattered amidst the landscape, 2 swimming pools and other recreational facilities, as well as many workspaces for us.

Orientation

We'll gather on Saturday and settle in with a welcome family-style dinner where we can get to know one another. Sunday, after breakfast in our villa, we'll be off on an adventure to the nearby town of Arezzo for their famous Antiques Market on the first Sunday of the month, where you can find treasures to use in your work or just to inspire you. We will have lunch at a little restaurant in the old part of town and have an informal discussion about how to spot subject matter for photos to use to help your creativity. Sunday dinner will again be family-style at our villa. Then, we’ll have a show-and-tell evening of the treasures you purchased or photographed today along with photo presentations by Meredith & Dotti.

Activities

In a typical day starting Monday morning, after waking up to a view of the valley and breakfasting in our villa, we'll start our Loosening Up Creativity workshop using materials we have collected from our Sunday excursion. AND, with Dotti, we'll explore the grounds and learn how to use photography as inspiration for our art and take photos that we will print out to use as inspiration or to use directly in our collage work. After a break for lunch in our villa or at a picnic table on the grounds, we'll continue making 2-D and 3-D art with treasures we collected. We’ll journal, write some prose, collage, work with Meredith’s loosening up creativity techniques with music and stretches, plan a temporary art installation, etc. Later, we'll explore nearby towns and castles, and in the evening, have a family-style dinner at a small local restaurant. Every day, we'll head to various spots to photograph, paint, collage or create, either on our hillside or in nearby villages, go to farmers’ markets, etc., usually alternating between having lunch out and then dinner back at our villa, or vice-versa.

Farewells & Extensions

Friday evening, we'll have an exhibition of our work, and then we'll go out to a local restaurant for a real Tuscan feast.   Saturday, we'll say our goodbyes to those who are going to leave, then head to Florence with those who are going to extend the workshop with a stay in Florence for the weekend. We'll do a lot of sightseeing and take a lot of photos and go to some special places hidden away, such as the world-famous mask-making workshop of Professore Agostino Dessi. Again, on Monday, we'll say our goodbyes to those who are going to leave, then head to Venice and the islands of Lido, Giudecca, Murano, Burano, Torcello, and more until the following Saturday. We'll head up to some little-known high places with fabulous views, visit the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, eat cicchetti & fritelle, and visit artists in their galleries and ateliers such as a gilding shop, a paper shop, a printmaking workshop, a stained glass studio, a gondola workshop, etc.

Costs

Florence & Venice costs are not included in the prices below, and will be quoted upon request.

Workshop

$700 plus other costs below. Non-workshop participants may join our group. Transportation to and from our villa in Tuscany is not included. Transportation will be included in the Florence & Venice add-on options.

Accommodations

Meals, and Arezzo excursion included, check-in Saturday October 2 to check-out Saturday October 9.

  • Private room with private bath in our villa
    – $1000 for one or $1400 for two.
  • Shared room with bath in our villa
    – $700 per person (come with a friend or we’ll pair you up with a new friend).

50% deposit is required to reserve your space. Until deposit is received, prices may be subject to change. For more information, see www.merartstudio.com or call 503-777-6363 or email meredith@merartstudio.com

Instructors

Meredith Dalglish, MFA, listed in “Who’s Who in American Art”, has been an artist & educator for over 25 years. She was an artist-in-residence nationally in Florida, Indiana, Wisconsin, California & internationally in China, Brazil, Scotland and Holland. She has completed commissions throughout the U.S., and volunteered on the now famous “Dinner Party” Project with Judy Chicago. She is Founder & Director of the Women’s Institute for Creativity, Inc., since l992 in South Florida and now in Portland, Oregon. Her business, “Art in Motion,” and studio is in Portland, Oregon where she resides.

Dotti Cichon, International Traveler, Artist, Photographer, Ceramicist, Writer and Curator divides her time between Europe & California. She has spent years living & making art in Europe & photographing & exhibiting her work nationally and internationally. She speaks English, French, German and just enough Italian to facilitate our experiences in Italy.

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La Meridiana International School of Ceramics in Tuscany

New Techniques with Embedded Colored Clays & Photo Techniques on Clay

At La Meridiana in Tuscany, Italy

La Meridiana
Location

La Meridiana occupies a restored 15th century farmhouse, in the heart of Tuscany, not far from the medieval town of Certaldo, in the vicinity of Florence and Siena. Founded in 1981 by Pietro Elia Maddalena, what started off as a summer school, thanks to the high standard of organisation, teaching and facilities, has become a very important ceramic school in Italy.

Activities

Throughout this fun and informative workshop, there will be photo presentations to inspire you by expanding your visions of clay as an artistic medium beyond functional. Tuscan Landscape We will work together to create a temporary site-specific sculpture as a process piece using the local clays we have dug and processed while putting to good use the new techniques we have learned in this workshop.

Learn how to identify, dig and process the rich, multi-colored clays of Tuscany to use in your work. Dotti and Meredith will demonstrate a few simple tools and techniques that result in rich, complex effects that appear to be more difficult to make than they are. Meredith will introduce new techniques that she has innovated and developed such as embedding color and powdered pigment into clay. Dotti, a photographer as well as a ceramic artist, will demonstrate photo-transfer techniques onto clay. We will work with incorporating shards and found objects into clay as a fine art form.

Excursion

On Sunday November 7th, we’ll go to the First-Sunday-of-the-month Antiques Market in Arezzo to enable you to find souvenirs of your workshop in Tuscany to take home with you, to incorporate in future work inspired by this workshop.

apartment kitchen at La Meridiana

Costs

The fee of 1200 Euros includes: workshop, materials & firings, accommodations in apartments with cooking facilities, 1 dinner, 1 breakfast, 5 lunches, evening photo talks, transportation to and from the town of Certaldo upon arrival and departure and for grocery shopping , and the excursion to the Arezzo Antiques Market.

About the Instructors

For full details, contact Meredith at 503-777-6363, or send email to: meredith@merartstudio.com.

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Artists' Retreat in Tuscany!