Developing a Creative Voice

This workshop focuses on creative project development and best practices for taking your artistic work to the next level whether that is preparing work in an exhibition, website, or sharing it with community. Conversation will be tailored to the group’s needs for advancing their projects, with emphasis given to defining professional goals, finding avenues for sharing work, and sustaining long-term projects.

This workshop is ideal for makers at any level of practice - career or hobby-based. A central element of the workshop will be portfolio reviews and constructive critiques where artists will receive personalized feedback on their work and ways to strengthen their creative voice while exploring the aesthetic and emotional aspects of their projects. Participants will connect more deeply to their own practice and be able to consider their work within a more expanded practice of the fine arts, developing a sense of community with other participants. Project critiques will be given with consideration towards shaping a cohesive body of work with practical advice given regarding size, number of pieces, and sequencing of multiple works.

Jennifer Murray is an artist, educator and curator who lives and works in Chicago. She is the executive director of Filter Photo and was previously the director of A+D Gallery, at Columbia College Chicago for eleven years where she organized a broad range of exhibitions in art and design. Murray is an independent curator organizing exhibitions engaging new audiences with emerging artists. She teaches a broad range of topics from photography skills to portfolio development and professional practices for emerging artists. She is an instructor at Loyola University Chicago and an independent artists' consultant and mentor working with artists on project development and exhibition preparation. Murray received an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2002.

Participants can bring physical pieces of artwork to share or digital files. For digital files, please bring images on a flash drive or external hard drive that can connect to a Mac computer or store them in your preferred cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive. Please be prepared to sign into your cloud storage account with the instructor’s computer to retrieve them for sharing with the group