MELBA CLASS: Visual Rhyming

During this workshop, participants will create their own accordion books.

We will begin by creating collages inspired by fragments of poetry, then incorporate them into a book, considering composition, sequence, pauses, and rhythm. We will explore the dialogue between image and text, looking at how visual elements can rhyme with one another and with the poetic fragments themselves. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have created their own unique, entirely handmade publication combining collage and poetry.

For the workshop, Andrea has prepared selected fragments from poems by Polish author Agata Puwalska, along with her own archive of printed materials for participants to work with.
The workshop is part of a series that began during a design residency at the Miłosz Festival in Kraków in 2026, where Andrea was invited to engage with Agata’s poetry. The project is supported by the EFFEA programme and developed in partnership with the Miłosz Festival, Studio Komplekt, and &NowEast.

Who is it for?

No previous experience in bookmaking is required — just an interest in collage and the relationship between images and text, particularly poetry.

Participants are also welcome to bring their own collage materials, such as magazines, books, photographs, coloured paper, or drawings.
About Andrea Popyordanova:

Andrea Popyordanova is an artist and graphic designer who lives and works in Sofia. She holds an MA in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art, London (2020). She works as a freelance editorial designer mainly for the culture sector – museums, galleries and artists in Sofia. In her artistic work she often uses various forms of the book as a medium. She works with narratives about understanding how we live and impact our surroundings, how we connect to land and the stories of the past embedded in it; how we are constantly shaping, and being shaped, by the landscape.

In 2025–2026 she is part of the artist research residency Common Grounds, a project between France (Citadelle de Marseille), Galicia, Spain (Fundación RIA) and Bulgaria (Gradoscope, Sofia) during which she focuses on textile dyeing, painting on ceramics and working on a publication, related to ways we talk about our relationship to land and care. She also takes part in the artistic residency organised by Milosz Literature Festival (Krakow), where she is invited to work with the poetry of a local writer and create a workshop and artistic work based on this.

Number of participants: Up to 10

Participation fee: €20

Registration: hello@studiokomplekt.com
Email subject: Melba Class Andrea

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Excerpts from the poetry of Agata Puwalska:

“glass is most interesting when it cools” (превод предстои)

now when it’s finally possible to speak of myself

and hear my own distinctive voice

and not someone else’s vibrations reproduced by dreams

of a sea thick as down of typhoons of islands

of a ravaged coastline of snow

from a perforated stream

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“ammonite shells”:

and suddenly a palm tree appears

beautifully sketched it plashes like waves that don’t exist

but above it

the western sun in the landscape

what more do you need? to feel secure