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La Foret – Art and Acting in the Forest
Enjoy outstanding arts education with instructors from the Fine Art Center’s Bemis School of Art set in the lush forest at the 400-acre La Foret Conference and Retreat Center. Experience a variety of artistic styles and techniques, including painting, printmaking, and mixed-media art while exploring elements of composition and design. Cultivate your acting skills, voice, movement, and characterization with theater games, mime, and improvisation. Art and acting will come together on Fridays with a special showcase performance and art exhibit for friends and family. Ages 6-11
Repujado: Mexican Tin Art
Please join us for a lesson on the history and tradition of Mexican metal embossing or "repujado." "Repujado," also known as embossing metal, is the art of working in metallic foil to give volume and relief to a decorative design. You will learn how to emboss and deboss on tooling aluminum and create your own design, engrave it into aluminum, and incorporate new techniques into your art. Ages 12-16
Line, Color, Blend
Join your child in this fabulous, shared experience! Together, you all will create a variety of compositions in collage, painting, pastels, simple printmaking, and more. Work with various textural surfaces and colorants in your layered processes. Create your own designs on tissue and rice paper. This class is based on workshops from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Ages 6-12 with participating adult
Repujado: Mexican Tin Art
Please join us for a lesson on the history and tradition of Mexican metal embossing or "repujado." "Repujado," also known as embossing metal, is the art of working in metallic foil to give volume and relief to a decorative design. You will learn how to emboss and deboss on tooling aluminum and create your own design, engrave it into aluminum, and incorporate new techniques into your art. Ages 16-Adult
The (Simple) Art of Iris Paper-folding
Iris folding is a simple paper-folding technique that originated in Holland. Color-coordinated strips of folded paper are taped into place over a pattern, creating a spiraling design that resembles the iris of an eye or camera. You can use this craft technique to create cards, or the finished project can simply be framed and hung. In this class, students will make two unique designs. Ages 16-Adult
ArtTrax: Mixed Media Sculpture II
Build on knowledge learned in Art Trax Sculpture 1, while learning some wildly non-traditional techniques and tricks to gain some base knowledge to start building with plaster, clay, and one-part mold making. Bemis ArtTrax is a new curriculum created to provide equitable and accessible pathways to the arts. ArtTrax courses introduce the fundamental concepts of painting, drawing, and sculpting through a series of engaging exercises. Emphasis is not on producing finished works of art but rather on developing a basic skill set through practice and repetition. No prior knowledge or experience in the medium is needed or expected for level I classes. The courses then proceed sequentially, each level building upon what was previously presented. Ages 16-Adult
Drips, Drops, and Strokes of Color Express
Dive into new ways of blending and applying color to your fabulous collages! Learn how to layer multiple colorants to achieve a high visual texture. Use paints and inks, dripped and blended, paint sticks, and rubbing alcohol to work resurfaced magazine sheets, crumpled metallic tissue paper, and more. You will also create Gelli plate prints for added layers of texture for your unusual compositions. Adults
Make a Garden Gnome
Once dried, gourd shells are hard and thick like wood and are easy to paint, decorate, and are weatherproof. All participants will create at least one indoor/outdoor art piece using a dried gourd. Ages 16-Adult
Garden Concertina
Create a garden-themed concertina folio with pockets. Acrylic paints and stencils will be used to embellish the mixed media paper and then apply the folds to create a concertina. Distress tags with paint, collage images onto the tags and tuck them into the pockets to complete the creative process. Designed for all levels, this class will provide step-by-step instruction and give you an opportunity to explore your creative skills. Ages 16-Adult
The (Simple) Art of Iris Paper-folding
Join your child in this fun shared experience! Iris folding is a simple paper-folding technique that originated in Holland. Color-coordinated strips of folded paper are taped into place over a pattern, creating a spiraling design that resembles the iris of an eye or camera. You can use this craft technique to create cards, or the finished project can simply be framed and hung. Ages 10 and up with participating adult
Cutting into Color
Matisse traded in his paintbrush for a pair of scissors – and now you can too! We will work on exploring out-of-the-box collage styles using various layering techniques as Matisse and other collagists did. Create artworks with found, prepared, and altered papers of many weights and textures in addition to paints and pastels. Elements such as line, color, and texture will be the focus of this class. Ages 6-9
The Natural World
The imagery of the natural world will serve as our inspiration for this class. Think science colliding with art, and where this can lead the imagination! The images explored include butterfly wings, sea creatures, bugs, galaxies, and more. By looking up close at nature's gifts and using pastels, colored pencils, paint, and gel pens, we will discover how the world around us is full of ideas for making colorful art. Ages 6-9
Line, Color, Blend
This mixed media workshop focuses on the layering and blending of pastels, paints, inks, and more. Work on a variety of surfaces and create fabulous textural and painterly compositions. We will explore wet and dry techniques with some simple printmaking techniques, stencils, and stamping. Ages 6-9
The Secret Garden
Using inspiration from the classic book, "The Secret Garden" by Frances Burnett, learn to draw the main character Mary Lennox, build the graffiti garden with collage and paint, blend colorful art tissue with acrylic paint to make the blossoming garden, and design a keyhole peeking into the garden. A floral headpiece will be supplied for each student to wear for a tea party hosted by the instructor on the grounds of the Fine Arts Center. Ages 7-11
ArtTrax: Mixed Media Sculpture I
Experiment with various materials and techniques such as glass fusing, plaster, cardboard, and tinfoil while learning about historical and contemporary sculpture and applications of the studied materials. Bemis ArtTrax is a new curriculum created to provide equitable and accessible pathways to the arts. ArtTrax courses introduce the fundamental concepts of painting, drawing, and sculpting through a series of engaging exercises. Emphasis is not on producing finished works of art but rather on developing a basic skill set through practice and repetition. No prior knowledge or experience in the medium is needed or expected for level I classes. The courses then proceed sequentially, each level building upon what was previously presented. Ages 16-Adult
Painting and Collage on Tyvek
Tyvek is a plastic-like commercial material. Repurposed, it is a fabulous pliable surface for collaging with papers, fibers, paints, inks, and pastels. Using a simple heat method, we will create unusual compositions including printing our own tissue and deli papers from Gelli plates, an exciting method of monoprinting. Get creative and learn how to work with lots of texture, color, and layering. Ages 9-12
Heroic Icons
Who are your personal heroes? Create an icon-like art piece emphasizing a loved one, friend, or pet whom you want to honor. This multi-media project uses a variety of drawing mediums, and possibly a photo collage. The foam core frame will be painted with gold acrylic paint. Each parent and child will make their own art piece. Ages 7-12 with a participating adult
Create Your Own Tarot Deck
Interested in Tarot? Are you a beginner or a seasoned reader? In this class, we will learn about the art history of tarot cards, their various systems of symbolism and interpretation, as well as basic image-making techniques to create your own deck of tarot cards. By the end of this course, you will have learned the basics of tarot and created the first 22 cards (the major arcana) of a tarot deck, or the full 78 cards (the major and minor arcana), if desired. Ages 16-Adult
Making Art from Nature
Let's make art from nature! We will learn to use materials found from our surrounding mountains. Anything from flowers, mud, grass, twigs, honeycombs, and so much more! You will make three projects over three different sessions: nature explosions, assemblage, and printmaking. We will use our hands and get messy as we find inspiration in the beauty around us. Ages 9-12
Introduction To Stop Motion Films
This class is an introduction to creating stop motion films! You will learn how to create storyboards, characters, sets, movement, and editing techniques. The characters will be created with clay, the sets will be created with found objects, and the films will be created with basic stop motion software on iPads. Students should bring their own personal iPads and, working on Colorado College’s guest Wi-Fi, will be able to create wonderful works of magic. Ages 6-9