Workshops

Integrating Mind, Body, and Art, a Color Woodblock Printmaking Retreat

June 5 - 7, 2026, at the Rowe Center, Rowe, MA.

This is a tentative date. To learn more, email Matt of your interest.

Below is 2025 Workshop Leaders and Description.
The June 2026 workshop aspires to be similar, and even better!

 
Join Matt Brown and co-leaders Todd Binzen, Matthew Daniell , and Maureen Burford for a camp-style workshop at a beautiful location in western MA, the 100 year-old Rowe Center below Adams Mtn. near the VT border. Structured around the project of finishing a batch of woodblock prints as a team, the weekend explores making art as part of a team.
This workshop is an experience of color and form, mind and body, Taoism and Buddhism, craft and art. 

To find out costs, schedule, and other details, and to sign up.

To see more of how the printing project is shaping up.

Describe a bit more?
During this retreat we'll do carving and printing using the Japanese technique (the hanga method). Focus will be on the communicative potential of making art as a group. To help that to work, we'll pursue activities during the weekend to build meaning around our group project.
We'll also keep in mind a goal: the completion of a batch of prints that participants can divvy up and take home.

The Japanese hanga method?

Hanga is printing by hand with wood and water. It was the printing method used to make the ukiyo-e and shin hanga prints of Japan. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was done collaboratively by a team. Materials are non-toxic (just rice paste, water, and pigments), printing is with brushes and a hand-held baren instead of a press.

Weekend Schedule:
Friday night - Buddhist talk (well, it might be more a conversation) with Matthew Daniel. 
Saturday morning (9 - 10)- Qigong movement class, led by Todd Binzen

Saturday morning begin print workshop (10 - 12:30)
Saturday afternoon print workshop (1:30 - 5)
Saturday evening - Music-making time with Maureen Burford (7 - 9)
Sunday morning (9 - 10) Qigong movement class, led by Todd Binzen.

Sunday morning print workshop (10 - 12:30) organizing, signing, and blessing the prints, followed by a farewell lunch.

Explain the printmaking part, the activity for Saturday, one more time?
Todd and I will bring to the class blocks and papers already carved and partially printed. We'll also have blank blocks, and papers will be unfinished with printing work left to do. Plenty of papers and colors, lots to work with. The art part of the weekend will be bringing one or more batches of these prints to completion, and discerning as a group how to organize our time and our path through the work. 

view looking up King's Highway to the entrance of the Rowe Center:

Class description for workshops I used to teach:
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Introduction to Japanese Color Woodblock Printmaking
The Japanese developed a woodblock printing method using water as a medium, brushes to apply colors to the blocks, and use of a hand-held baren instead of a press to transfer colors from multiple carved blocks to printing papers. This is a low carbon-footprint, non-toxic printing method.

Workshops are organized to offer a comprehensive introduction to the tools, techniques, and materials    of this printing method. In each class everyone completes a multi-color print and engages with aspects of design, carving, and printing. The workshop includes sharings of tricks and techniques adaptable  to other art-making approaches (watercolor painting, western-style printmaking). All experience levels are welcome.  

Each 3-day workshop is taught in six three-hour sessions.  To find out more, and to see prints made by past class participants, visit the Studio, or send me a note.

On the work by students page you can see prints and photos from past workshops and see images of prints made in classes. Below are links to web-sites of some who have gone on to make hanga prints of their own after taking the class. 

Annie Bissett
Mary Graham
Richard Sabin
Sandy Wadlington
Jennifer Worsley

Matt