Workshops

As part of Making Meaning, we are offering focused workshops designed for active, hands-on engagement.

These sessions extend the symposium’s conversations into practice, inviting participants to explore collage as a material process.

Capacity is limited. Advance registration is required through symposium registration.

Depth Chambers: Collaging Spaces of Imagination and Community

In his architectural teaching practice, Clive Knights devised and has deployed for over three decades what he calls the ‘augmented collage spatial study,’ a particular mode of black and white, handmade graphic visualization that provokes the spatial imagination through collage combined with charcoal dust augmentation. Through a collaborative round-table process, collages are initiated by each workshop participant using source materials provided and then passed to the person to the left several times, each time adding a new piece before passing on. The resulting collages are each created by the hands of eight participants, and they manifest unique perceptions of space drawn from a synthesis of intuitive making across multiple sensibilities and imaginations. 

  • Clive Knights is an English collagist, printmaker and creator of festival structures based in Portland, Oregon. He is represented by the gallerist Laura Vincent in Portland’s Pearl District. Since 2021 he has had 4 solo shows of his collages and monotype prints in Portland, and solo shows at Sacripante Gallery in Rome, Italy (May 2023) and at the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg, VA, (February thru May 2024). He has exhibited work in over 50 group shows in multiple US states and overseas, including England, Scotland, France, Spain, Poland, Belgium, Slovenia, Estonia, Norway, Ukraine, Italy and Colombia. In April 2022 he curated the international exhibition Corporeal Gestures in Portland that included over 100 collages by more than 100 artists from 22 countries. He designed and published the catalogue of all the work in this show. In June 2022 he published his first monograph covering his own work from the previous 3 years titled Gestures from a Body at Work: Unsuccessful Attempts at Grasping Eternity. The fine art publisher No Reply Press has recently published two limited edition handmade books, one with a short story titled ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’ by Ursula K Le Guin, accompanied by ten original collage interpretations; and one with a novella by Leo Tolstoy titled ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ accompanied ten original monoprints. In September 2024 he published a collaborative book of poems and collage characters with Canadian poet Terriann Walling. He was the founding director of the School of Architecture at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, and his work is influenced by a career in architectural education, by studies in the phenomenology of the human body, and by a fascination with the potential for innovations of meaning embodied in poetic works across all media.

Collage in the Archive

Vassar College Archivist Emma Gronbeck will present a look at Vassar’s history and traditions through a selection of student scrapbooks made between 1870 and 1940. Scrapbooking was for decades a very common practice among Vassar students and there are over 360 scrapbooks currently in the College Archives. Carefully curated and highly personal, these scrapbooks often contain letters, notes, photographs, pressed plants, invitations, event programs, drawings, and other decorations and ephemera. They offer a wealth of insight into the activities, thoughts, and priorities of their creators, as well as reflect general trends in the culture of scrapbooking.

  • Emma Gronbeck is Vassar College’s Archivist in the Archives and Special Collections Library. Gronbeck collects, preserves, and provides access to records and other valuable historical materials related to Vassar students, faculty, and alums. Additionally, she conducts instructional sessions with faculty to help students work directly with primary sources and better understand historical research. Gronbeck has a bachelor’s degree in German and Scandinavian Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a master’s degree in library and information science from Simmons University in Boston. She worked as a processing archivist at the UMass Amherst Library, the Dia Beacon art museum in Beacon, NY, and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Fine Press & Artist Books

Drawing from the rare book collection in the Vassar College Library, Ron Patkus, Head of Special Collections and Vassar College Historian, will present a selection of fine press and artist's books that feature collage. Local, national, and international artists will be represented, including John Baldissari, Barbara Beisinghoff, Michele Burgess, Barbara Leoff Burge, William Kentridge, Werner Pfeiffer, Ilse Schreiber-Noll, Kurt Schwitters, and August Talbot.

  • Ronald Patkus is a native of Connecticut. He received a BA from Boston College (1986), an MA and Certificate in Archival Management from the University of Connecticut (1987), an MS in Library Science from Simmons College (1993), and a PhD in History from Boston College (1997). He serves as head of the Archives & Special Collections Library and is the College Historian. A member of the History Department, he also holds the Frederick Weyerhaeuser Endowed Chair in Biblical Literature and Bibliography. He is the Library Liaison to the departments of German Studies and Italian. His teaching and research interests focus on the history of books and printing, and the history of Vassar.

Tau Blau by Barbara Beisinghoff

Art Zines and Zine Art

In this workshop, participants will join Zine Librarian Melanie Maksin to learn about zine history/ies, explore zines from the Vassar College Libraries’ collection, and reflect on possibilities for collage in the context of zine-making and zine forms invigorated by collage praxis. We will look at examples of different bindings, formats, uses of texture, and other design features, and work together to make samples to take home for future inspiration. Whether you’re new to zines or an experienced zinemaker, this session will provide opportunities to develop your art-zine toolkit.

  • Melanie Maksin is the Head of Academic Engagement in the Vassar College Libraries, as well as Vassar’s “Zine Librarian” (an informal title that she gave herself). Her passion for zines–which began thirty-ish years ago as a teenager in Florida–has been reignited at Vassar, where she offers workshops on zine history and zine-making. Melanie’s professional interests include student engagement, inclusive pedagogies, and academic libraries as spaces of belonging and empowerment–all of which interweave in the Libraries’ zine collection. Prior to arriving at Vassar in 2019, she worked in libraries at Yale University, Swarthmore College, and Kenyon College.

Art on the Vassar Campus

Join Betsy Subiros VC '25 on a guided tour of selected art located on Vassar’s campus. Enjoy her insight as the Collections and Registrarial Fellow at the Loeb. The tour includes seeing works by Alexander Calder, Rose B. Simpson, Mark Dion, and Jenny Holzer amongst others that The Loeb cares for beyond the museum's walls.

  • Hialeah, FL native and Vassar ’25 alum Betsy Subiros is the Collections and Registrarial Fellow at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, following four years of student employment there. With a degree in Art History (concentration in medieval art), she specializes in collection care, stewardship, and cataloging. Subiros is deeply passionate about the future of museums and caring for their collections.

Collage and Risograph

Join Asy Connelly, Manager of the Vassar Innovation Lab, for a dynamic workshop where she will show how the speed - and mechanical quirkiness - of risography can create layered, beautiful, and occasionally surprising, interpretations of collage.

*This workshop is filled to capacity.

  • Asy Connelly is the manager of the Vassar Innovation Lab. She brings with her a wealth of experience in design, fabrication, and entrepreneurship. Notably, she is the Co-founder of the Tempestry Project, a global fiber-arts initiative focused on climate communication and education where she ran workshops at colleges and museums nationwide. In addition to her professional achievements, Asy is an accomplished inventor, holding a patent for a knitting notion, (Needle Wranglers), which she designed and printed on her DIY 3D printer.