PORT ANGELES — Summer’s here, and the time is right for art-play in the meadow.
So every Monday this month, a flock of female artists are offering Monday meadow classes outside the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.
Students in first through sixth grades are invited to partake in the alfresco sessions from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. this and every Monday through Aug. 29.
Each class costs $10 if participants sign up the Friday before the session. On the day of class, admission is $12.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” said Barbara Slavik, the center’s education director who puts together the annual ArtPaths student art show.
“The idea is to utilize the woods,” she added, referring to Webster’s Woods, the 5-acre art park that surrounds the center and meadow.
“This” starts with “Woodland Masks,” with Port Angeles artist Dani LaBlond showing children how to shape clay into masks fit for an enchanted forest.
The creations will be kiln-fired and returned to the young artists; if they choose to take the “Intro to Painting” class with LaBlond on Aug. 22, they can add color to the masks.
On Aug. 8, Vi Nixon will teach a class mixing outdoor art with tale-spinning.
Stories about art
“I’m going to tell my own made-up stories about the [art] in the park,” said Nixon, “and then the kids will take a walk, find a piece and tell their own stories.”
This place is fertile for this kind of thing, with shoes walking up a tree trunk, faces dyed onto bark, sweaters walking on the forest floor, fish swimming in midair and scores of other handcrafted creatures.
There’s even a bench, at the meadow’s edge, wrought to look like black eyelashes.
“The Art of Mixed Media” is the Aug. 15 class, with Slavik showing students how to choose forest materials to create a three-dimensional work of art.
She’ll delve into composition and repetition, and how artists make the most of them.
On Aug. 22, LaBlond will teach the painting class, an exploration of the color wheel, of mixing colors and of using various brushes.
The last class on Aug. 29, “Learning to Draw What You See,” is not as simple as it sounds. Teacher Cathy Haight will teach about symbols, contour line drawing and shading. She’ll also help kids get beyond what she calls a “big barrier: thinking you should draw something exactly as it looks.”
In case of rain, the classes will move from the meadow to the center’s indoor gallery space.
For complete details, phone the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center at 360-457-3532 or visit www.PAFAC.org.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
