Machetanz festival for all kinds of artists

PALMER — Mosaics, beadwork, photography, drumming, body movement and lots and lots of painting are on tap in the upcoming Machetanz Arts Festival.

Running all day June 1, the festival promises 21 workshops over the course of the day.

Asked which she’d like to highlight, organizer and assistant professor of art at Mat-Su College, Felicia Desimini, said, “just about all of them.”

“We’ve kept some old favorites like our silk painting international art star Francine Dufour Jones,” she said. “We have new instructors for mixed media, we have a new printmaking class, we have a mosaic class that’s going to be really awesome.”

Featured this year are portrait painting workshop teacher Dean Larson and the leader of the garden mosaic workshop Karen Urroz.

A Palmer native and San Francisco resident, Larson is “associated with the resurgence of the American Realist Movement,” according to the festival’s brochure. He’s won awards for his portraiture and his work has been displayed in churches, universities, museums, courthouses and corporate collections.

Urroz is a Palmer resident and an instructor in stained glass work at the college.

“Her dedicated student following over 20 years speaks highly of her accomplishments and teaching skills,” according to the brochure.

Workshops offered include Athabascan beadwork, digital photography, drawing, mixed media, mosaic, movement and drumming, oil painting, pastels, printmaking, silk painting and watercolor.

In addition to the June 1 workshops there are a few four-day workshops available, one with Larson and the other with Urroz.

To register, visit matsu.alaska.edu/MAF. Prices are $55 for a full day class and $30 for a half-day. Lunch is optional and costs $10. You can also show up and register June 1. Classes are open to students age 16 and older.

Desimini said this is her first time organizing the Machetanz festival. She came to Alaska in August to teach at the college and “hit the ground running.” She said she’s looking forward to the festival and thinks the college is a great place for it.

“There’s just this whole sense of community and then this experience of trying something new in a safe place where great things happen,” she said. “It’s really an incredible space where you can have this experience with affordable hands-on art making.”

It’s not her first festival, though. She used to organize a film festival when she lived in New Hampshire.

“It’s a transformative experience in that the public can just come and try whatever they’ve really wanted to work on,” she said.

She said she hopes that, above all, students have fun.

“That’s what it is, no pressure and it’s fun you can experience some kind of hands-on activity,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.