Tag: Classes & Workshops

So proud of my students from my summer workshops who all exhibited a piece of art at the Santa Cruz County Fair this year. I just picked up the work and was so impressed to see the number of ribbons on their work. In the category of ceramics or sculpture we had SEVEN 1st place winners, SIX 2nd place winners, THREE 3rd place winners, SIX honorable mentions and TWO special awards; one for excellence in originality and one for excellence in technique! Amazing amounts of talent coming out of the studio! Hope that you all had a chance to walk through the Fine Arts building at the fair this year and check out the work. See ya next year at the fair!

Every year Earth Art Studio summer workshop students participate in an end of summer art exhibit. In past years we’ve shown work at local coffee shops, local libraries and last year we displayed our work in the Fine Art building at the county fair. Students received ribbons for participating and we had a number of students who placed with 1st, 2nd & 3rd place ribbons in the ceramics and sculpture categories- so exciting! So, we are doing that again this year, all the work is packed and labeled for delivery to the fair. The Santa Cruz County Fair is open September 16 – 20 so while you’re chowing down on your corn dog and taking a break from the carnival rides, make sure to swing through the Fine Arts building and check out all the creative talent our county has to offer.  See you at the fair!

 

 

 

Today we wrap up a summer of cr8iv sculpting for kids at the studio. This class will be making clay totems, a felt sewing project with Matisse inspired designs, plaster cast creatures and a few mini projects too. Thanks to everyone who joined in on the fun and made this a super cr8iv summer!

 

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Past the halfway point of summer workshops, today we are working with the basics. Pinch pots and coils to create cute coiled flamingos in pinch pot pools. We’ll be carving the pools to have wave patterns and when they are fired, we’ll melt some glass in the bottoms of them to appear like water. Once these guys are glazed and fired, we’ll glue in some wooden dowel legs so they can stand in their pools.

A few spots are still available if you’d like to join in on the fun: Sign Up for Summer Workshops Today!

 

 

Today we’re working on some watermelon paper mache bowls using a balloon as our mold. We’ll be looking to the color wheel to learn about complementary colors and choose which pair of colors we’d like to use to paint the surface of the melon bowls. I think an abstract purple and yellow watermelon would look pretty tasty!

 

 

 

We’re in full swing of week two of our summer sculpting workshops at the studio. We started off the week with clay succulent containers that have texture and pattern decorating the outside. We also made balance bowls, students were challenged to create a bowl that did not touch the table with a flat bottom, this has yielded some interesting results! Next up, we’ll be casting our arms in tape to create figurative sculptures with a focus on form, working with wire to create creeping spiders and painting our clay projects. Its going to be a busy week at the studio!

A few spots are still available if you’d like to join in on the fun: Sign Up for Summer Workshops Today!

Summer Sculpting Workshops launched this Monday at the studio with fun clay projects and new techniques. Students ages 7 and up made pinch pot pools for their coil built flamingos and we used an ink transfer technique to get cute animal images onto our slab built boxes. While our clay projects dry and get ready for the kiln, we’ll be busy working with paper mache, wire, weaving projects and more!

A few spaces are still available for young creative artists…
Join Summer Sculpting Workshops for Kids

B CR8IV!!!

 

I’m so excited to see my favorite artist friends at Atis Rezistans (Resistant Artists) from Port-au-Prince Haiti here in California! My good friend Kathy Barbro who owns Art Projects for Kids and an art teacher in LA ran a campaign to get Romel Jean-Pierre, Claudel Casseus & Racine Polycarpe here to teach art at her school for a week. I’m sure that the kids at her school are so thrilled and had such fun art adventures this week. After the week is up, they are all road tripping up to Santa Cruz for a visit and I can’t wait! In addition to the three guys coming, it just happens that my friend Nadine Dolores Francois who runs an orphanage and girls empowerment program in Port-au-Prince will be here as well. This is her first trip to the US, so its extra exciting to have her here. You can learn more about my connections to Haiti and the projects that I’ve done there with these amazing people by checking out the Philanthropy Projects page. More pics to come of our epic art adventures during the Haitian Invasion week!

I have been teaching clay classes to kids and adults through a variety of programs for nearly 20 years and I’ve held classes out of my home studio since 2005. I have seen students go from little 5 year olds making cookie cutter smilely faces to mini-artists making masterpieces. Here is just a sampling of my talented students working on the wheel and showing off finished work. I’m so impressed by their attention to craftsmanship, their patience to work on a project week after week and their ability to let go when its just not working out. I’m so lucky to get to spend time with these guys!

To learn more about classes at the studio for kids, teens and adults, click the link: earth art studio