22″x22″; contemporary fashion magazines, National Geographic, dyed paper; 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
NEW SKILLS AND TECHNIQUES WORKSHOPS AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS 2026
New Skills and Techniques Workshops
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Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 10-14 June 2026. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.
Workshops at Kolaj Fest New Orleans offer participants the opportunity to engage with their process or materials in a new way; explore subjects or themes; or practice a new collage technique to make. Over a dozen workshops take place during the festival. Here is a selection:
WORKSHOP
Stop-Motion Animation
Cape Girardeau, Missouri artist Emily Denlinger’s collage making practice. Denlinger’s collage animation, Angel Baby vs. Drone Eagle, was part of Collage on Screen program at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2024. In 2025, Denlinger worked with Kolaj Fest New Orleans attendees to create short, stop-motion animations as part of her Gain of Function project. The film made with these animations will debut at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2026. In this workshop, Denlinger will demonstrate how animation is an accessible artistic practice without a lot of tech or start-up costs. Participants will learn how to use their mobile phones, a phone tripod, and free apps to create collage stop-action animations. Working in small teams, participants will create short animations with a collage figure with movable joints.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, USA. Emily Denlinger has worked as Area Head and Professor of Digital Arts, Photography and New Media at Southeast Missouri State University since 2009. Originally from Ohio, she holds BFA in 2D Art with a Concentration in Photography from Bowling Green State University, and an MA in Digital Art and an MFA in Photography and Digital Art from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her collages have been exhibited across the USA and are held in collections internationally. At Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2025, she introduced her “Gain of Function” project, which resulted in a zine, exhibition, and an animation. She also took part in Kolaj Institute’s Collage on Screen Artist Residency in 2023, the Collage & Illustration Residency: Frankenstein, and the Carnival as Folklore Residency. In addition to her gallery practice, Denlinger creates accessible wearable art that is created for commissions or sold in the local community at boutiques and fundraising sales. In her free time, she works with the Cape Girardeau County Clerk’s office to promote voting and voter registration and as an election judge. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.emilydenlinger.com.
53”x52”; cyanotypes on cotton; 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
WORKSHOP
The Sun as Glue: Cyanotypes & Lumen Prints
The cyanotypes and lumen prints of New Orleans, Louisiana artist Robert A. Schaefer, Jr. demonstrate how the medium is an example of collage process, where the fragments are bound together through the photographic process. The sun is the glue. “The process of collage allows and even encourages me to use prints that I might in earlier times have thrown away, but now have become key elements of my collage…Viewers are invited to explore the many layers in my imagery and consider meanings and relationships as well as how these relationships relate to them personally.” Lumen prints date back to William Henry Fox Talbot’s (1800-1877) experiments with cameraless photography in the 1830s, which led to Talbot’s copyrighting of the Calotype Process in 1841, using silver nitrate and potassium iodide to make a paper negative which is then put on other papers and exposed in the sun. Lumen prints are commercial photo paper exposed to negatives or objects in the sun and placed in a bath of fixer to preserve the image. László Moholy-Nagy and his wife, Lucia Moholy, popularized the technique as a fine art form in the 1920s. Cyanotypes, named for their distinctive cyan blue, were invented in 1842 by English polymath John Herschel (1792-1871). A friend of the Herschel family, Anna Atkins (1799-1871), used the process to document botanical and textile specimens. Starting in 1872, the process was commercialized and used to print on fabric, to copy technical drawings and blueprints, and to make banknotes and postage stamps. Artists from 18th century fabric makers to early 20th century Pictorialists, to Late Modernists like Francesca Woodman, Barbara Kasten, David McDermott, and Peter McGough have used cyanotypes in their work, as do a number of contemporary artists. In this workshop, artists will collaborate on a cyanotype and a lumen print using the sun to expose digital negatives or objects to the paper and then drawing out the colors by placing them in various chemical baths. After Kolaj Fest New Orleans, the resulting artworks will become part of Kolaj Institute’s collection and exhibited at an exhibition of photography and collage in December 2026. The artworks will be scanned and the images will be sent to the contributing artists.
Those interested in taking this workshop are invited to bring with them negatives (analog or digital) or flowers and leaves or small translucent objects.
Space is limited. Pre-registration is required.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Robert A. Schaefer, Jr. studied architecture at Auburn University and the Technische Universität in Munich, Germany. He has shown his work in Austria, France, Germany, India and the US. The Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama presented a 25-year retrospective of his work in 2000. Since arriving in New Orleans in 2015, he has taught cyanotype workshops at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. His cyanotype work was shown at the Goethe Institute in Delhi, India; at the Kirschman Arts Center in New Orleans; as part of two shows at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans; and as part of Kolaj Institute’s “Camera & Collage” exhibition (November 2024-January 2025) and “Pictures at the Intersection of Photography & Collage” (December 2025-January 2026). He is a member of the Special Agent Collage Collective and his locative collage appears in Locative Kolaj, a zine produced by the collective after Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2025. Learn more at www.schaeferphoto.com and on Instagram @ras2pro.