Connect & Create: Collage Workshop with Anthony Smith

Collage has been a time-honored technique artists have used to describe a fractured inharmonious world where the traditional formal artmaking rules do not always apply. In this workshop attendees will explore the socio-political tropes utilized by such early modern artists such as Max Ernst, Hans Arp, Juan Gris, Romare Bearden and others, and filter their styles, inspirations, and formal approach through our contemporary lens to create works which fuse messaging together with design considerations. Our time together will begin with a quick review of these compositional design principles, an exploration of our materials used in the workshop, a review of historical references and finally how these techniques of the past might be recontextualized to explore issues of our day such as the war in Ukraine or the Black Lives Matter movement. After attendees sketch their ideas, they will be invited to put together works where they will be taught several strategies for integrating collage and other ephemera into works that deliver both personal messaging and compositional balance.

Anthony Smith received a B.A. in Fine Arts from Amherst College (1999) and an M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Michigan (2001). Smith also studied wood-block printmaking in Kyoto,  Japan at Kyoto Seika University in 2001. Anthony has shown his work locally at Bethlehem House Gallery, nationally. as well as internationally. He has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Detroit Free Press, The Ann Arbor News and the Artist’s Magazine. Anthony has taught at such institutions as the Lehigh University, Muhlenberg College, University of Michigan, Parsons, Princeton and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland. Smith served as an artist-in-residence at the National Academy of Design (2006 – 2008), and at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont in 2016. He is currently an adjunct professor of fine arts at Northampton Community College.  He lives in Allentown Pennsylvania with a studio at the Banana Factory Art Center in Bethlehem, PA.
For more information please visit Anthony's Smith Jr. website. 

Connect & Create workshops offer a brief exploration and creative conversation around a work of art from the LUAG collection, followed by a hands-on activity and/or creative response led by a local teaching artist.