Registration Open!
Light, Shadow, Chance: Teen Mixed Media Workshop
w/ Artist Ashley Norman
Location: Performance Space
10:30am-12:30pm
Registration: Member $40 / Non-Member $50
Ages 12 - 18
What happens when you let chance, light, and a little bit of the unknown guide your process?
In this hands-on workshop, participants will explore mixed media through prompts, quick exercises, and collaborative experiments that blend drawing, collage, projection, and play.
Using a range of materials and approaches, students will create layered works that pull from observation, imagination, and shared human experience. Some pieces may feel familiar, others unexpected.
Through short, low-pressure prompts and brainstorming exercises, participants will practice generating ideas, following unexpected turns, and building work through layering, transformation, and revision.
Participants will also work with creative constraints and create their own approaches, using structure as a way to open up new possibilities. Sometimes the limit becomes the spark.
All skill levels are welcome, from beginners to students looking to expand their materials, processes, and portfolios.
Inspired by the Exhibition
This workshop is inspired by the Artist Advancement Grant exhibition featuring Jihye Han, Cozette Russell, and Isabella Rotman.
Across their practices, these artists explore identity, symbolism, and transformation through layered processes.
Jihye Han draws from memory and Korean folk traditions to explore home, identity, and belonging. Cozette Russell works through cutting, layering, and rephotographing to stretch time and reframe the image. Isabella Rotman uses symbols and divination as tools for reflection, intuition, and meaning-making.
Participants will take a similar approach, using materials, prompts, and chance-based systems to explore how images can shift, evolve, and carry meaning over time.
Sample Prompts
Participants may explore prompts such as:
Memory Mapping drawing from personal or shared experiences
Folk Symbols creating your own symbolic language inspired by folk traditions
Chance-Based Making using dice, oracle cards, or a magic 8 ball to guide decisions
Shadow Tracing using light and projection to trace, distort, and transform imagery
Cut, Layer, Project building images through collage, projection, and reworking
Each prompt is a starting point. Follow it, bend it, or go somewhere else entirely.
What Participants Do
- Generate ideas through prompt-based and chance-based exercises
- Experiment with cutting, layering, projection, and light
- Explore symbolism, storytelling, and shared human experience
- Create both individual and collaborative works
- Work across materials in a flexible, exploratory way
What Participants Leave With
- A series of mixed media works
- New strategies for working with memory, chance, and layering
- Expanded approaches to materials and image-making
- Greater confidence in experimentation and process
- Works-in-progress to revisit, rework, and grow over time
What to Bring
Optional: sketchbook, reference images, or small personal materials. Phones may be used for reference if needed. (Flashlights will be provided if you want to disconnect, slow down, and explore working with light in a more analog way.)
About Ashley Norman:
Ashley Norman is an artist, educator, and community builder working under the pseudonym Ashley Normal. Her work explores connection, beauty hidden in the bizarre, and perfectly imperfect moments of everyday life through drawing, collage, and interdisciplinary practices.
With over 18 years of experience across public, community, and higher education, she creates supportive environments where students can experiment, take risks, and build confidence. Her teaching centers on play, curiosity, and the belief that creativity grows through practice and the power of yet.
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3S Artspace is supported in part by grants from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and NHCF's Geoffrey E. Clark and Martha Fuller Clark Fund; and Little Bay Fund.
Thank you to our lead sponsors: AC Hotel Portsmouth, The Brook, The Kane Company/Tidemark, Katzman Contemporary Projects, Raka, Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel and Stirling Brandworks.