Creative Freedom: Personal Expression Through Visual Art Making, Practiced in Community.

When we work in the discipline of artmaking, we gradually become vessels for new wisdom…We develop a tolerance for ambiguity and a resilience that comes from reclaiming  play as the primary means to learn.

- Open Studio founder Pat B. Allen in Art is a Spiritual Path

What: Individual visual art practice in a community setting

When: 10 AM-12 PM on Saturday April 23rd.

Why: To personally create visual art in community from a place of freedom and play

All supplies are provided (including tea). Just bring yourself and your “play” clothes!

Workshop Overview:

In each session we will use different materials as we experience this elegant process whose only “rule” is “no comment”. We release ideas of “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong” as we make for the sake of exploring our creativity. The structure for each class is:

-  Introductions and centering

-  Freewriting intentions

-  Creating side by side with playful abandon

-  Freewriting as you witness your creation

-  Sharing our images and writings (that we choose to share) with one another

“The goal of art as a spiritual path is to live a meaningful life, full of active participation with our own hands, minds, and hearts, and appreciation of the joy and pleasure and depth of soul that is possible…"

Facilitator Biography:

Ann Boyd worked for decades as a professional theatre artist and full-time faculty at Columbia College Chicago. She paints, writes and draws as a practice and took her first Open Studio workshop in Evanston, IL six years ago. In the spring of 2021, Ann completed their facilitator training course and is so happy to be able to share this cathartic, insightful, individual, and community creative and healing experience.

“It is play’s underlying emptiness or absence of cultural categories and boundaries that enables it to encompass the fullness of life.”

- O. Fred Donaldson in Playing by Heart

Ticket | $30

Ticket Link