New Spaces from Found Materials

Like the quilts of women working in the small Alabama river town of
Gee's Bend, many architectural projects celebrate used and discarded
materials and transform them into works that are innovative and
surprisingly modern.
The Summer Workshop will take inspiration from the hands-on model
developed by the late Samuel Mockbee, founder of Auburn University's
Rural Studio. The built work of the Rural Studio responds to challenges
and opportunities found in the cultural and physical geographies of the
American South, and especially to those of Hale County and the Black
Belt of West Alabama. The rich, agrarian landscape and local cultural
traditions provide the setting and the inspiration for projects.
Artists, those with academic training but perhaps more significantly the
many others who are self-taught, respond to the rich patina and rich
potential of found materials. These may be assembled in ways that are
subtle and nuanced, or wildly expressive, and in conventional ways or
not. We will explore the possibilities for collage techniques, for form
and space and surface, as we work to see and know better the immediate
setting in which we are working in Macedonia.