Mother’s Day Seaweed Bouquet
’Rejectamenta’ Workshop
with Brett Windham
Sunday, May 12th
10:00am - 2:00pm
$55 per person
Tickets here
Seaweed print from 2023, BDW.
Come mix it up and make an unusual Mother’s Day bouquet—from seaweed!
Artist Brett Day Windham will introduce you to seaweed collecting and pressing, which became popular during the Victorian era’s natural history craze. It was an acceptable form of amateur science for women; amateur Victorian algologists were drawn to seaweed for its status as ‘rejectamenta,’ something that had washed up on shore and, if not preserved, would go to waste. Even Queen Victoria got in on the act. Aside from that rich history- it is incredibly fun!
Let’s continue the tradition with fresh seaweed brought out to the farm for your pressed “bouquets.” Any leftovers will feed the crops- kelp is a great fertilizer.
Bring your favorite Matriarch and let’s play! Each participant can expect to make up to four 9x12 inch pressings.
We will provide: paper, cheesecloth, cardboard, seaweed and expertise!
You will need: yourself, and your imagination.
From the Victorian era.
BRETT DAY WINDHAM
Brett Day Windham (born Cambridge, England, raised Providence, Rhode Island) is a multidisciplinary artist currently working with cyanotype. She received a BFA from Hampshire College, a certificate in painting from SACI, in Florence, Italy, and an MFA in Sculpture from RISD. Her work has been collected internationally and has been included in shows around the US, including The Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Smack Mellon (New York), the RISD Museum (Providence), Tompkins Projects West (Los Angeles), Cave (Detroit), Gallery Project (Ann Arbor), 808 Gallery (Boston), Samsøn Projects (Boston), University of Maine Museum of Art (Bangor), and RMCAD (Denver). Windham received a Dean’s fellowship while at RISD, and was nominated for the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant. Residencies include The Select Fair Residency (Brooklyn, New York), The Chrysler Museum Glass Studio (Norfolk, Virginia), TSKW (Key West, Florida), Cascina Remondenca (Chiaverano, Italy), and Penland (Penland, North Carolina). Her work has been discussed in Art New England, Elle Decor, V Magazine, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Providence Phoenix, Whitewall Magazine, and The Bangor Daily News.
STATEMENT
Windham’s work is based on ideas around color and collecting. Using an intuitive sense of composition, she organizes collections of natural, commercial, and industrial remnants into multi-disciplinary works which confer feelings of mysticism and ritual. Her hand-painted cyanotypes are at once early-process photographs, paintings on paper, and objectless sculptures. Each object is collected, pressed tightly until dry, printed in the sun, washed and dried, and finally painted, a process that can take months to complete. The dried and flattened specimen allows for sharp detail and translucence that informs the painting. The use of inventive, abstract color is a way to bring this Victorian-era process into the present day: using modern Japanese, American, and British watercolors in vibrant cadmium, fluorescents and pastels, the work simultaneously references contemporary painting and the antiquated art of hand-tinted photographs.