Under normal circumstances, September would be the start of a new series of workshops offered in my studio. However, Covid19 has disrupted everything. But from hardship comes innovative new ideas and a different way to gather and learn from each other. The Art Connection Summit is the brainchild of Adele Sciortino and Leslie O’Leary and is basically a virtual 5 day conference revolving around figurative sculpture, doll art, textile art, felting, beading and embroidery to name a few things. Everything you want to learn and more, all without the travel expenses, hotels and time restrictions.

Whether you are an artist, a student, collector or art lover, during the Summit you can take and download as many classes and seminars as you like, and you have the time to work on them during or after the conference. You can meet and interact with other students and teachers from around the world and you can take advantage of excursions, speakers and educational seminars.

Ten instructors are offering 18 exclusive, never-before-seen workshops. For my part, I’m offering two new polymer clay sculpting classes – a whimsical 2-day project workshop called “Fantastic Beasts Taxidermy” and a 4-day technique based workshop called “Sculpting Studies”. The workshops are suitable for both novice and experienced sculptors. The nice thing about these new classes is the format is mostly video or a combo of PDF files and video files, so you can actually see my process and my techniques as I do them. Once you download the files, they are yours to go back and refer to as often as you like.

“Fantastic Beasts Taxidermy” is a fun project for any age or skill level. I show you how to make several different animal characters as well as creating portraits of your pet. Templates, PDF’s and videos take you through the steps from prepping the wooden base to accessorizing your sculpture. I can see these being great Christmas gifts for all the animal lovers on your list.

If you are interested in figurative sculpture or portrait work, “Sculpting Studies” will be of particular interest whether you’re a beginner or ready to take it to the next level of advanced studies. You’ll learn all about facial anatomy, mapping and the step by step process of building the face and head. I give you several alternatives like how to sculpt a closed mouth, an open mouth and how to insert teeth. I show you how to sculpt the eyes without using prosthetic glass eyes or beads, how to age the eye or create an ethnic eye. I cover common sculpting mistakes and how to correct them. After each segment I will show you how to apply it to a full face sculpt. This workshop took almost a year to put together and I feel it’s one of my best workshops for the student who is serious about improving their sculpting skills.

There’s lots to see and do at the Art Connection Summit. Check it out for yourself at http://www.artconnection.gallery

Hope to see you in one of the groups. Stay safe and make art!

For the live interview with Maria Saracino click on the link below.