2023 ZART Conference Reflection by Veronica Hodges
As a first time ZART Conference participant, I went in with an open mind to the opportunity to connect with other AENT members and be inspired by the presenters and Guest Speakers of this event online. The boxes of supplies were delivered to me promptly and I was impressed by the items received. Korin did a great job to secure a room for both days of the event to host the ZART Conference online and AENT provided some morning tea/coffee and food items to kick start the event.
Patricia Paccinini was the first Guest Speaker and she talked at length about her art and what it meant to be human with the ability of having empathy and care. Prompting me to consider “not art for art-sake” but what is it that I care about in my art, environmental care and personal purpose for my art?
I participated in the Mindful Felt Making with Norton Fredericks. I had never made felt before so enjoyed the creating, then slow stitching a “Power Word”. This concept was a great idea and how we applied that to our process to create a unique piece of work. I enjoyed the process for this and could apply this to my practice in a lot of ways.
Day 2 the Guest Speaker was Henry Ward who had a lot of great experience and ideas for engaging students to create their own ideas for artmaking.
The workshop was creating a self portrait collage with Julia Gutman. This process was paper collage as way of expressing the skin tones in layers and overlaying either cut pieces or ripped pieces after an initial self-sketched portrait from a photo reference. The last part of the day was some discussions by other artists, their processes and question time. Overall, a very engaging, enjoyable couple of days learning with lots of great tools and supplies to use in our kits, practice and teaching methods. Highly recommend to all. Thanks AENT.