Serious About Series with Kelley Knickerbocker
Serial creating can be seriously amazing!
Watch Promo Enroll in Course
Kelley Knickerbocker has a fresh and enthusiastic take on how working in series makes us smarter and better artists. Just like we humans become better people by acknowledging/exploring other perspectives and experiences, we creatives become better artists by executing a palette/subject/design/composition in more than one way.
If you’re looking to develop a cohesive body of mosaic work to show, this course is for you.
If you’re looking to develop a recognizable personal style or “voice,” this course is for you.
If you have a favorite subject/idea/color/style you want to explore, or a longer story to tell, this course is for you.
Too boring, you say? Like to change things up with every new work? Kelley will show you how that approach can fuel one of the most exciting and satisfying successes of a series: maintaining continuity while changing a lot of things up!
In this course, as you build a series of four works, you will learn:
- To explore beyond your first (reflexive) idea
- How a series differs from a multipart artwork
- How to choose a cohesive, design-supporting color/material palette
- How to compose/design for a series
- When spontaneity in execution can complement pre-planning
- What unifying elements will link your series works together
- How to riff off of “master” or “anchor” design elements in each work
- How working on multiple artworks at the same time aids continuity and efficiency
Using the four seasons as her subject, Kelley builds in real time four related yet stand-alone mosaics that when finished form a cohesive series. As she sketches multiple design ideas to find the one that resonates, compiles a color/material palette, chooses sizes/shapes of the individual works, figures out the order of construction across multiple substrates, and sets her tesserae into mortar, Kelley explains all of her thinking and decision-making processes. As you build along, using your own favorite materials and personal style, watch your thinking, experience and skills level up.
Your Instructor
Visual artist Kelley Knickerbocker left a 22-yr administrative career at the University of Washington in 2006 to found a mosaic studio (Rivenworks Mosaics, Seattle) and direct her accumulated skills in project management and planning toward designing/fabricating/installing mosaic artwork for public, commercial, residential and gallery environments.
Kelley’s ruggedly dimensional mosaics, in a broad range of materials, are a textural distillation of her fascination with contrast, material properties and the technical challenges of mosaic construction. Sharing that fascination and learning from other art makers are keys to the freshness of Kelley’s mosaic practice, and she travels extensively throughout North America speaking, collaborating and teaching in-depth workshops on mosaic style and technique.
Kelley’s fine art mosaic panels have been accepted to numerous national and international juried exhibitions, and many reside in private collections. She is an active member of the Society of American Mosaic Artists.
Course Curriculum
-
StartIntro and personal interview with Kelley and Tami (7:15)
-
StartPDF for download. Suggested tools, materials, and resources
-
StartSeries: What and why (5:16)
-
StartSeries: Why and how (7:07)
-
StartThe upside of limitations (5:01)
-
StartUnifiers and focus (12:36)
-
StartSubject study (9:43)
-
StartChoosing a palette (7:56)
-
StartDesign (11:11)
-
StartIdea thinking (5:14)
-
Start"Master" design elements (7:42)
-
StartOrder of construction, building summer (18:16)
-
StartCutting, setting, nipper review (7:29)
-
StartBuilding spring (16:06)
-
StartMargins, building autumn (9:24)
-
StartContinuity, balance, orientation (5:10)
-
StartBuilding winter (16:56)
-
StartWrap-up, review (10:47)