Make a Portable Altar Book with Doug Baulos

"Make a Portable Altar Book" with Doug Baulos

Saturday, October 4, 2025

10 AM to 4 PM

Limit 12

$95, Includes Lunch and Some Supplies

Join us for a meaningful work with local artist Doug Baulos. This workshop investigates experimentation with a selection of wet media, including  watercolor. Learn about historical and innovative approaches to developing works on paper, collage & other grounds in the shape of a personal altar. 

Students will combine watercolor and painting methods into engineered pages investigating and experimenting with traditional and non-traditional altar shapes and architecture. Learn to combine simple techniques and processes that demystify your approach to artistic process, creativity and memoire.

We will look at altars from Mexico, Italy and Vietnam as inspiration. Through the creation of these altars’ students will maximize their expertise in a wide variety of studio practice as well as learn to bring a personal, narrative conceptual ties to the creation of a personal altar. The altars built in the class could be built for a special person, idea or general feeling.

Materials List

Doug will provide:

• Paper for inside book
• Thread
• Needles
• All adhesives, matte medium etc.
• Other construction materials

Students will provide:

• Collage papers
• Found papers
• Watercolor or acrylic inks
• Paints
• Pencils
• Ruler
• Scissors/xacto
• Cutting matt
• Chartpak colorless blender
• Brushes
• Palette
• At least 5 black and white xeroxes of personal images they wish to incorporate into their pages
• 3 feet of waxed paper
• Black sharpie
• Small sponge or soft rag
• Painters’ tape
• Container for water.

The altars we are creating will be approx. 4” x 7” high but will be both books and sculptures - many students will incorporate layers of images and info.

If you are building an altar for an ancestor, consider bringing photographs (or copies), memorabilia, beads, crystals, jewelry etc. Consider bringing small (less than 4”) thin cardboard or paper boxes as collage materials to build depth.