Under the Mexican Sun: Cyanotypes, Botanicals, and Textiles in San Miguel de Allende

with Meryl Truett

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Course Description

San Miguel de Allende, with its luminous high-desert light, Spanish Colonial architecture, and vibrant botanical life, offers a rich environment for exploring the historic photographic process of cyanotype. In this immersive, hands-on workshop limited to only 8 participants, you learn how to create expressive cyanotype prints on both fine-art paper and fabric, combining traditional photographic techniques with botanical collecting, making digital negatives, and using natural dyes for expressive prints.

Led by Meryl Truett, a long-time photographic artist now based in San Miguel de Allende, this creative week explores the beautiful cyanotype medium while focusing on a contemporary vision for this antique alternative process. Together, we discover the imaginative potential of sunlight, plant forms, and layered imagery while working in one of the world’s most inspiring cultural centers.

Daily field explorations in and around San Miguel de Allende provide opportunities to gather botanicals, photograph textures and architectural details, and observe the visual poetry of the surrounding landscape. You learn to make digital negatives from your photographs, integrate them with botanical forms, and then print them using the classic Prussian-blue cyanotype process. We also experiment with organic toning techniques using natural dyes such as cochineal, tea, hibiscus, and other locally sourced materials. Throughout the week, you build a body of work that merges photography, printmaking, and textile-based processes. The workshop culminates in a group critique on Friday and informal exhibition of finished pieces that evening.

Additional Information

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:

This workshop is for photographers at all levels, mixed-media artists, printmakers, and textile artists interested in alternative photographic processes and experimental image-making.

What You Should Know:

Experience working with cyanotypes and/or mixed-media arts is not required, although those with prior knowledge are welcome to attend and expand upon your creative horizons.

This workshop is limited to 8 participants.

Activity Level:

To get the most from your workshop experience, participants should be in good physical (mobility, stamina) and mental health. Come prepared for the high elevation of San Miguel de Allende, long days, and seasonal weather. You must be able to carry your own photographic and personal gear at all times, both on campus and on location. You are responsible for being open and honest about your physical fitness, and we reserve the right to remove you from the workshop if we find your fitness to be less than that which you have described.

Participants should be able to engage in moderate outdoor exercise for up to an hour or more at a time including walking on uneven terrain such as cobblestone walkways and roads, dirt, and loose rock. Location work is likely to include early morning and/or late evening shoots.

Policies:

View Payment, Refund, Cancellation, and Transfer Policies for this International Program.

about

Meryl Truett

Meryl Truett is a photographer and mixed media artist based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She received her MFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2003, and she has received numerous awards, including an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission.

Meryl’s work has been featured in Oxford American, Art Papers, Darkroom Magazine, Petersen’s Photographic, Camera Austria, The Vanderbilt Review, SCAD Alumni Magazine, Home: Miami, deep, Skirt! Paprika Southern, and South Magazine. Her books include Thump Queen and Other Southern Anomalies, an anthology of fine-art photographs depicting the quirkier side of southern living, and Vernacular Highway: The Road Less Traveled. Her handmade book, Relics, Ruins, and Artifacts, was created in 2014.

Meryl’s photographs are included in public and private collections, most notably, the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA; Telfair Museum of Art-Jepson Art Center, Savannah, GA; BellSouth Corporation, Vanderbilt University, Savannah College of Art and Design, and the University of South Carolina. She has extensive experience teaching at the college level and conducting photography, mixed media, and book publishing workshops.

Website: meryltruett.com