About the Workshop

A Matter of Material is a “hands-on” painting workshop aimed at the individualized recipe development of painting materials such as grounds, paints, and pastels. This five-day workshop will function as a materials lab, privileging tactile experiences and experimentation to gain insight into the materiality of pigments, binders, and their related mediums. Throughout the workshop, we will mix, grind, and mull to make our own grounds, paints, mediums, and pastels from scratch. By the end of the week, participants will have gained an understanding of the “ingredients” in artists’ materials, their characteristics, and learn how to tailor these materials to better suit individual practices.

No previous knowledge of working with pigments and binders is needed. Some background in painting is preferred.

Refer to the Materials List for those materials students should bring to the workshop.

About the Instructor

Dani Levine is an artist and educator living in Astoria, NY. Mixing pigments, binders, and other found materials, her practice explores themes of chance, agency, and resilience. She has developed painting material courses for schools such as Yale, Princeton, Boston University, Pratt Institute, and Swarthmore College. Through teaching, she engages with artists’ materials as a means to build specificity, context, and agency within artists’ work. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art and BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Select honors include group exhibitions at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., The Alfred Museum, and The Abrons Arts Center, as well as an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee, the Fine Arts Work Center, and The Lower East Side Printshop.