Yvonne Manipon applied for to our Scholarship Program in the hopes that she would be able to attend Fran Valesco’s printmaking and watermedia workshop.
As a full time art teacher at a Catholic High School in Hawaii, Yvonne seeks to expose her students to a variety of art media and techniques. Although already a seasoned plein air oil painter who would relish an opportunity to explore Umbria, Yvonne’s real excitement was about the chance to learn new things that she could bring back to her classroom.
Based on her statement and the strength of her 3 submitted paintings, our Scholarship Committee awarded her one of the 2024 scholarships and invited her to join Fran.
“an exceptional high school teacher who is also a skilled painter. [..] Her wish to incorporate printmaking into what she does as both an artist and a teacher was compelling. We feel her time at La Romita will provide rich experiences that she can incorporate into her teaching and her individual art practice. “
For various reasons, the format of the workshop was changed to a group residency; instead of being one of many students with a teacher, Yvonne shared La Romita with experienced printmakers and multi-media artists working on independent projects.
Yvonne pivoted, packing oils and watercolor in anticipation of an Umbria en plein air experience. But as one might expect from a group of artists, what could have been a crisis became instead a study of incredible collaboration and exchange between its members.
All of the attending artists shared space, experience, and techniques and Yvonne still left the program with understanding of printmaking and watermedia – and plans for how to incorporate that into her classes this year.
Although her classroom doesn’t own a printing press, she received many suggestions for projects that would not require one. Yvonne plans to include reductive monotypes, screen printing, gel prints and chine colle, stenciling or stamping with natural found objects in her lessons this year.
“A highlight for me was painting at the famous man-made waterfall called Cascata delle Marmore. The English poet George Byron visited the Marmore Falls in southern Umbria in 1817, describing them as “horribly beautiful”. Something so frightening and overpowering does indeed perfectly reflect the romantic notion of sublime beauty”
“As a plein painter, I tend to focus on drawing and painting projects in my classroom, however now that I’ve been exposed to various printmaking processes and even bookmaking (again) with such an amazing group of artists, I will definitely use this in my classroom more often.”
