Dirty it up!

I took a fantastic Box Art class with Inge Infante this past spring at the Community School of Music and Art in Mountain View, California.


Here's Inge, inspecting a student's box in the Box Art class. She is a wonderful teacher. Her explanations are clear, she's very helpful when you're stuck, and she doesn't have any "secret" techniques that she won't talk about. She brought in some of her finished boxes to show us how the techniques look. I have seen some of these techniques demoed (sorry, I know that's not a "real" word) before, but hadn't realized how I could make them work for me. Inge's clear instructions and the examples she brought in both helped me to see the potential.

Now I am suddenly so much into transfers and the layering of images. I recently added some collage to a box I made for a little book. I wanted the collage on the box to match the collages in the book. It was hard to go back in time and do the old style collage. I kept thinking "it needs another layer," and "that paper is too clean and white." I view this a a very good thing, and have Inge to thank for it.


Here are some of the students. The class room was a nice space, the other students were great people. I loved all the little tips Inge had for us. The reasonably priced black gesso from Nova Color mentioned in a previous post was one of her tips. Inge is teaching a class at the Community School of Music and Art this fall that will cover boxes (assemblage), collage and altering books.

"Dirty it up" is often what she often says when a work in progress seems boring or isn't going anywhere.