Course Descriptions
These Summer Week I courses are required for our year-round students, but open to the public on a full or partial day basis. While providing prime opportunities for personal renewal and professional development, course completion receives credit towards Foundation Studies, Teacher Ed. and Early Childhood programs.
History of Human Consciousness through Art with Patrick Stolfo*
Art reveals the underlying, essential nature of cultural stages of development. We will examine seminal examples of painting, sculpture, and architecture, reading them as expressions of their time period, and live into humanity’s ever-changing relationship between inner and outer reality. We will see how the ideal of beauty, as a revealer of truth and goodness, metamorphoses in the rise and fall of cultures. References will be made to how these themes are woven into the Waldorf school curriculum in the grade school and in what is commonly known as the 9th grade History through Art and the 12th grade History through Architecture blocks.
Painting/Drawing with Martina Angela Muller*
This course is a deep immersion into nature, using the gateway of observation, color theory, mood, and different techniques to create drawings and paintings that deepen our perception and bring us news from the world around us. We will hear the gurgling brook while we study and draw trees, grasses, different swathes of landscape, decipher color combinations, learn how to draw and paint water and how to use dark, light and texture to create foreground, middle ground and background. We will mostly work with pastels, charcoal and pencils and occasionally watercolor. If weather does not permit work outside, we will bring nature to the classroom and continue our studies indoors. Detailed instruction will be given before embarking on any exercise and nature herself will guide us through our artistic processes. We will draw and paint with the heart first then analyze and improve things with the head later in the process. We all benefit from developing keen observational skills to assess developmental, social, and environmental situations.
Clay Sculpture [elective] with Patrick Stolfo*
The central theme for most participants will be the modeling of the human head, while early childhood students will have the opportunity to shape an infant or child’s head. The open studio atmosphere also allows for alternative sculptural projects for anyone who might be repeating this elective.
The contours of the human head manifest the cosmic dome of the spirit, character of soul, and wisdom filled anatomy. Using the coiling technique as a basis for construction, we will proceed to shape the clay head from the whole to the parts by first creating a hollow vessel that can be further modeled from both the interior and exterior. Completion comes with the addition of further anatomical and expressive details. No previous experience is required.
Eurythmy [for everybody] with Lynne Stolfo*
We will explore and practice the 7 rod exercises accompanied by music. Fun, yet challenging, participants will develop their personal and social capacities for coordination, rhythmic precision, co-operation, and focus (mental clarity). The significance of copper rod exercises in Steiner education and therapy will be discussed.
Nature Stories and Eurythmy for Young Children [required for EC students] with Andree Ward* and Lynne Stolfo
Inspired by the beautiful Hawthorne Valley streams, forests, and farm, we will write and tell stories woven through with the archetypal gestures we observe in nature. With the help of eurythmy, we will move with the elements and learn to “read from Nature’s script”, as Rudolf Steiner described. This course is recommended for all storytelling enthusiasts, teachers, and parents of young children.
Daily Schedule
Week I – June 16 – 21
SUNDAY, June 16
3:00 – 3:45 pm: Registration | Tours for Newcomers
3:45 – 4:00 pm: Announcements; participant and instructor introductions
4:00 – 5:30 pm – Part I of the Evolution of Human Consciousness through Art w/Patrick Stolfo
MONDAY – FRIDAY*
8:20 am – Daily Arrival Time and Announcements
8:30 – 10: 00 am – The Evolution of Human Consciousness through Art, Parts II – VI
10:00 – 10:20 am – Break
10:20 am – 12:05 pm Electives: Painting/Drawing or Clay Sculpture
12:05– 1:00 pm Lunch
1:00 – 1:55 – Eurythmy for everyone
2 to 5 pm – Painting/Drawing or Clay Sculpture continued
3 to 5 pm – Nature Stories & Eurythmy w/ Andree Ward and Lynne Stolfo [an open elective, but required for current EC students]*
*4 – 5 pm on Friday only – Artistic Showings and Closing Forum
Evenings: Open Art Studios
