Online Course for Members

NEW DATES March 15, 2025 - June 7, 2025

DEADLINE March 1, 2025

This is our sixth iteration designed exclusively for our ecoartspace members!

The Sustain(ability) & the Art Studio course prepares artists and art educators to develop ways of thinking about sustainability in their practice, both conceptually and physically. Participants will learn how to wildcraft art materials, a practice that requires one to deepen their relationship with land, creativity, and self. We will also think critically about how one's community and ecosystem are vital allies in a time of socio-ecological destabilization.

The first half of the course includes lectures, guest artist talks, resource offerings, and group discussions, as we explore the implications of a bioregional perspective and investigate the function of art today. In the second half of the course, each student will work on their own project, informed by course content. They will receive feedback from Anna and the class before a final class presentation, open to the public.

Course content includes: sustainability as a stand alone concept, the historical background and function of art, review of artists and concepts including practical strategies and resources, exposure to a range of natural art processes and mediums, circular systems, interbeing, establishing sustainable development needs and goals, developing alliances and an action plan to generate one’s own project throughout the course.

All classes will be held on Saturdays. The first three sessions will be held in March from 2-4pm EST. The fourth session in May and fifth session in June from 2-5pm EST. Participants will create a project during the course and make presentations.

This online course is taught by Anna Chapman with guest presenters (below).

Course Schedule

I - Intro to Art and Sustainability - 2 - 4pm ET,Saturday, March 15

- Visiting artist from ecoartspace(((JohannaTörnqvist))) 

- Sustainability as a standalone concept

- Historical background and the function of art

- The local and the global

- Circular systems

- Bioregionalism / Place-Based Education

- Cultural Sustainability 

II - Art Processes and Sustainability - 2 - 4pm ET,Saturday, March 22

- Painting processes: paints, inks, & watercolors

- Charcoal

- Natural dyes 

- Papermaking 

- Found & recycled materials

III - Objectives, Relationships and Alliances - 2 - 4pm ET,Saturday, March 29

- Visiting artist from ecoartspace(((Lucia Monge)))

- Establishing needs

- Establishing your own sustainability goals 

- Interbeing 

- Local relationships and alliances

- Developing ideas around sustainability

- Action plan (students define their research project)

VI - Progress Presentations- 2 - 5 pm ET,Saturday, May 3

- Participants share the research and progress of their projects and receive feedback from class and instructor

V - Presentations - 2 - 5pm ET,Saturday, June 7

- Participants present and debrief about their projects.

Anna Chapman is passionate about the intersection of art, education, ecology and healing. Believing that interdisciplinary approaches to art and education are necessary to meaning-making in the context of the Anthropocene, her work is inspired by post-colonial, post-human, early European, and indigenous perspectives. Through her practice, Anna aims to mobilize reconciliatory relationships to place, community, materiality, and voice, to awaken one’s innate capacity for care and creative life force. She received a BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012, a Masters of Arts in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022, and is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts at UMass Amherst. Anna currently teaches through the Center for Art Education and Sustainability, the Continuing Education department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Umass Amherst. @owl_and_apple   annachapmaneducation.com

Cost is $375 per member, membership fee can be waved if needed. Approximately 12 participants max.

Email info@ecoartspace.org to participate

Below is the recording from the Fall 2024 course participants presentations