Summary: We’ll experiment with a wide range of materials and mediums—engaging their Textures, colors, energies, and origins—while exploring multi-media assemblage, unconventional tools, and embodied mark-making.
Full course description:
We are intimately connected to the materials we choose in all parts of our lives—especially in art making. We are drawn to materials through texture, color, smell, shape, scale, and movement. Our creative processes emerge from gestures that live within us, shaped by past experiences and memories.
Artists often choose materials that reflect identity, personal heritage, and the ideas or concepts they are exploring in their work. The origin stories of the materials we reach for carry energy, and that energy flows into the making process. Simply put, artists who work with wood often feel a deep connection to the forest.
In this workshop, we will experiment with a range of materials while exploring their origin stories and their historical, cultural, and personal significance. We will investigate how tools, substrates, gestures, and methods of attachment shape the creative process.
Through these explorations, each participant will develop work that emerges directly from their relationship with materials.

MEET THE ARTIST

Kathryn Cameron and Cindy Parker
Kathryn Cameron is a New York–based artist whose work explores the fragility of mind, body, and spirit through the symbolic language of shapes, forms, and color. Working with natural and repurposed materials such as paper, leather, wood, steel, and pure pigments, she investigates the profound interconnections between humanity and nature. Her practice is rooted in the colors, forms, textures, and rhythms found in both natural environments and architectural traditions across cultures, while also drawing upon the universal principles of sacred geometry as a unifying thread.
Cameron is a founding member of the New York School of the Arts and the HUB Center for the Arts, where she serves as exhibition curator, program director, and faculty member. Beyond her teaching in New York, she leads workshops and courses internationally, fostering cross-cultural exchange and material exploration. Most recently, she returned from artist residencies in Morocco and France, where she developed new bodies of work and presented two exhibitions of her latest sculptures and installations in the south of France.
Cindy Parker lived a wondrous, expatriate childhood and adolescence in Paris, and has always been a nomad. Language, seeing, cultural exploration and acceptance, thirst for discovery and the desire to write, learn, make and record things and celebrate is her art de vivre.
She teach expressive art and poetry and short story discussions for all ages and abilities in Boulder and Denver. She gives interactive art talks based on her travels and study of art theory and history. She's led women’s art retreats in France, Italy, Costa Rica and New Mexico.

EXAMPLE ITINERARY
Day 1
2 pm Welcome to the Château de la Napoule!
Meet at front gate, walk through gardens to the Salon, where we will enjoy le gouter, introductions with your instructor and Ray Brand, Threshold Art Retreats curator.
Activities according to instructor
5 pm Rosé toast on the terrace
Dinner times and plans TBA
Day 2
Château seafront arcade walk, yoga, beach (optional)
8:00-9:30 Continental breakfast at the Villa
10:00-1:00 Studio Session
1-2 Lunch at the Villa
2-5 Studio Session
5:30pm Private tour of the Chateau and grounds
Dinner times and plans TBA
Day 3
Sound healing session in the Tower
8:00-9:30 Continental breakfast at the Villa
10:00-1:00 Studio Session
1-2 Lunch at the Villa
2-5 Studio Session
5:00 San Peyre hike - 1.5 miles with beautiful views of the town and bay.
Dinner times and plans TBA
Day 4
8:00-9:30 Continental breakfast at the Villa
9-12 Studio Session
12:00 Lunch at the Villa
1:00 Depart for the Maeght Foundation - St. Paul de Vence and ime to explore the town and surroundings
5:30 return to Chateau
7pm Group dinner at local restaurant
Day 5
8:00-9:30 Continental breakfast at the Villa
10-1 Studio Session
1:00 Lunch at the Villa
2-5 - Studio and Exhibit set up
6:00 Rosé on the Terrace, workshop exhibit and discussion
7pm Farewell dinner at the Chateau




