Gain of Function New Mutations, Old Traditions: Stop Action Animation Workshop with Creative Assembly Resident LaVonna Varnado Brown and Artist Emily Denlinger
Wed, January 21st, 2026 at 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Join us at the New Orleans Museum of Art for a workshop co-facilitated by Artists LaVonna Varnado Brown and Emily Denlinger.
Participants will explore collage & animation as a socio-emotional tool to process new beginnings and purge to create space in the new year. Social Awareness is an important aspect of socio emotional intelligence. Heightened awareness supports in understanding the perspectives and emotions of others, including those from diverse backgrounds. We will also discuss the ways that creating a character through collage can help us move through the world around us with a heightened sense of awareness.
Characters developed in this workshop will incorporate symbolism and body language to highlight traits we intend to embody in the new year. We will then photograph each character and, through the photography process, explore elements of stop motion film making together while co-creating an intergenerational space to process ideas around releasing, receiving, stop motion, and collage making.
This program is for all ages. Anyone under 16 years of age should be accompanied by an adult who will also be participating in the workshop. Space is limited and prior registration is required.
About the Workshop Facilitators
LaVonna Varnado Brown
LaVonna Varnado-Brown is a resident of the 2024-2025 New Orleans Museum of Art Creative Assembly cohort. Varnado-Brown has worked as an installation artist, artist advocate, teaching artist, and tutor in and around New Orleans and with Beginning with Children, a Brooklyn–based college and career preparatory program). Varnado-Brown creates mixed-media visual art engaging with Afrofuturism, history, the divine feminine, and floral motifs. Varnado-Brown explores Afrofuturism as a cultural aesthetic to navigate the intersection of art and history and inspire action in the now by creating space for joy. Varnado-Brown finds inspiration in the community through facilitating workshops that create intentional space to engage in creative grounding practices that raise our spatial awareness and kinesthetic responses to one another and our environment.
Emily Denlinger
Emily Denlinger has worked as Professor of Digital Arts and Photography 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 Imaging from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her collages have been exhibited across the USA and are held in collections internationally. 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.