Sara Garden Armstrong, an internationally renowned artist whose exhibiting career and studio work with handmade paper processes spans over 50 years, leads this one-day program. The workshop begins with a brief introduction to Armstrong’s work, with hands-on examples. Then participants will focus on learning, observing, and making unique paper objects to explore the processes of pigment staining, pulp-pouring, pulp painting, and collage techniques on pre-formed sheets of paper. Technical information and recipes about sizing, pulp beating and experimenting with different fibers will be addressed.

Participants will dive deep into the practice of creating and sustaining new relationships with paper formation, pigments, and processes integral to promoting an ongoing experience with the fascinating world of papermaking, pigments, and collage.

At the end of the workshop, participants will leave with their own creation. They should bring 3 to 4 pieces of 12 x18 inch cardboard to facilitate transporting their work home.  All other supplies provided and all levels of experience welcome. There will be a lunch break from approx. 12:30pm-1:15pm, participants responsible for their own lunch.

Registration: Click on registration link to register for workshop. Please email anna.doll@rbi.gatech.edu for questions or more information.

About the Artist: Sara Garden Armstrong is a visual artist whose creative research/practice spans a
wide range of mediums and techniques, from large site-specific sculpture to artist’s
books. Her work addresses organic change and transformation while exploring
properties of materials, resulting in nature-based biomorphic abstraction. Layered two-
dimensional work and sculptural installations that often incorporate video projection and
sound, focus on life processes such as breathing and support systems of the body.
Other recurrent themes are water, time, and shifts of reality, with their elements of
chance and change.

Former atrium commissions have focused on scientific phenomena and their interactions
with the human condition, such as the installation for the National Multiple Sclerosis
Society at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB) Medical Center. A past recipient
of the Joan Mitchell Foundation CALL (Creating a Living Legacy) grant through Space
One Eleven, Armstrong’s national and international exhibition record extends over a
period of more than 40 years. Her artist’s books can be found in the collections of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among
others.

The monograph SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers, 2020, reveals
the influences and concepts that run through her diverse body of work. Its publication
coincided with a traveling exhibition of the same name, incorporating site-specific work.
The exhibition made stops in a three state area—Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

Armstrong received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and a
Master of Art Education from UAB. After living in New York City for 36 years, in 2017
she returned to Birmingham, where she currently lives and works in her building, which
provides space for Ground Floor Contemporary Gallery (an artist-run collective) on the
first floor and 21st Street Studios on the 3rd floor.