Our next Mocks and Smocks takes place on Friday, April 15 and is taught by Jess Quinn, who will be guiding participants through a mixed media collage on canvas creating images of poppies, and using this flower as inspiration.
Doors open at 5:30, and participants are encouraged to arrive then to sample refreshments and settle into their creative workspace. Class starts promptly at 6 PM.
From 6 til 8, Jess will guide participants in mixed media collage , using paint, paper, glue, and watercolors.
This series is a presentation of the Center for Arts and Learning. Ticket sales help to defray materials costs, pay the teaching artist, and supports overall CAL programming.
COVID Safety:
To ensure safety at this event, the class size is limited, the space has good airflow and we run an air purifier during class. Masks are required (provided if needed). Anyone feeling unwell should stay home and join us in a future class.
We’re very much looking forward to next week’s Mocks and Smocks event with Katie O’Rourke. Doors open at 5:30 PM and class starts at 6 PM. If you haven’t yet reserved your ticket, please do so now!
Katie is a Montpelier-based teaching artist and she is a great guide to help you create a finished painting that you can take with you. This month, we will be making an abstract winter scene.
Learn how to make this painting on March 18th
Great for friend groups. teens, and #TGIF unwinding sessions. Refreshments will be provided. $5 discount for two tickets purchased.
For folks who want to plan ahead, please check out the spring dates here and go ahead and pre-order the canvases for the dates you’re interested in. As always, class size is limited. Paintings for these sessions will be posted later.
If you enjoy this program, please make sure to tell your friends, post about it on Front Porch Forum, or share our Facebook events. See you on Friday the 18th!
Come #TGIF with us this month on Friday, Feb 18th and unwind with a fun low-stress paint along! Local teacher Katie O’Rourke will lead us through painting an owl face, with feather details. Come as a pair you can each do half a face!
As always, this is a sober family-friendly event and no experience is necessary. Refreshments and supplies provided. Take your painting home with you! For ages 14+
Painting of an owl face that we’ll be working on.
Please note, we’ve changed the ticketing a little bit to make it easier and more fair for everyone. Ticket costs offset supplies, teaching fees, and supports CAL programming.
Center for Arts and Learning presents Let’s Collage About It, a community exhibition of contemporary collage art by 15 Vermont artists. The exhibit includes a variety of collage techniques by artists of different ages and mediums. The exhibit is curated by artist Jess Quinn.
Featured Artists: Kristin Bierfelt, Liz Buchanan, Katherine Coons, Anne Cummings, Elizabeth Dow, Ren Haley, Holly Hauser, Lily Hinrichsen, Jean Kelly, Jess Quinn, Rachel Marie Rodi, Cariah Rosberg, Anne Sarcka, Peggy Watson, Olivia White.
The public is invited to attend the opening reception, to be held as part of Montpelier’s Art Walk on Friday, February 4th, 2022 from 5-7 PM in the 2nd floor Community Gallery. The Gallery is sponsored by National Life Group.
Are You Made of Stone? by Kristin Beirfelt, Middlesex, VTSending An SOS To The World by Anne Cummings, Westford, VT
The show will be on display until April 15th, 2022. Viewing hours are Monday – Friday 8 AM – 5 PM and 10 AM – 4 PM on the weekends. CAL is located at 46 Barre St., Montpelier, VT. The elevator accessible entrance is on Monsignor Crosby Ave. For more information about the exhibit and the artists, please visit www.cal-vt.org.
ABOUT THE VENUE: The Center for Arts and Learning (CAL) is the permanent home for the T.W. Wood Gallery and the Monteverdi Music School and serves as an artistic hub for Central Vermont, located in an historic building in Montpelier, Vermont’s capital. CAL is a nonprofit organization created to support the arts by providing studio space for artists, musicians, writers, and nonprofits.
Mocks and Smocks is back again every third Friday of the month, starting on the 21st with a wintry painting session led by Montpelier artistKatie O’Rourke.
Mocks and Smocks is open to everyone ages 14+, all materials and instruction will be provided. Enjoy mocktails and snacks on us. You take your painting home with you!
Friday, January 21, 2022. Doors open 5:30, class starts at 6 PM.
As seen above, our COVID precautions include masking, limited class size, and use of an air purifier in the space.
Class will be held in the 2nd floor gallery space. Elevator accessible entrance is located on the Msgr Crosby side (purple door).
Tickets available for youth participants, parent-child pairs, and adult pairs. We offer discounts for paired tickets.
Here’s the painting we’ll be working on this month.
Cardinal sitting on a fence in a snowy field with a branchy tree in the background against a blue sky while snowflakes fall. Painting by Katie O’Rourke.
Tickets help us to offset cost of materials, the teaching fee, and supports CAL’s overall programming. We appreciate your support. For more information: info@cal-vt.org.
We are pleased to invite you to our next Montpelier Art Walk event: a reception with painter Corrine Yonce. Her large acrylic portraits of residents in affordable housing units has been on display in our second floor Community Gallery, sponsored by National Life Group. The reception will take place on Friday, Dec 3, from 5 – 7 PM. Light refreshments will be provided.
This exhibit, part of the Voices of Home project, was curated by the Vermont Folklife Center. Voices of Home is an audio-visual storytelling project launched in 2015 by Corrine Yonce when she served as an Americorps VISTA volunteer with the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition.
This exhibit brings together work from two of Yonce’s collaborative efforts, Voices of South Burlington Community Housing and Voices of Decker Towers. Yonce envisioned Voices of Home as a way to “erase the stigma surrounding affordable housing communities and educate our friends and neighbors about the importance of a stable, reasonably priced home in helping people lead fulfilling lives.”
Through the project she interviewed residents in a number of Vermont affordable housing communities, engaged with them through their stories, and learned how having affordable homes impacted their lives. She recorded those conversations and subsequently paired the recordings with painted portraits of each interviewee. www.cmyonce.com
Our next Mocks and Smocks evening event will be with painter Katie O’Rourke as she leads us through a painting with lovebirds in a birch trees forest. Seating is limited, so we recommend an RSVP to save your seat and a canvas for you. Bring a friend and get a discount on a second ticket! Perfect for ages 14 and up.
Lovebirds in birch trees. Led by Katie O’Rourke.
The class is on Friday, November 19th from 6 – 8 PM. Light snacks and custom-made mocktails provided. Tickets close 24 hrs before the event. Please contact info@cal-vt.org for more information.
We’re hosting a special family version of our Mocks and Smocks event tomorrow at the T.W. Wood Gallery with local artists Katie O’Rourke. This class is perfect for families with children ages 8 and up. Look at this nighttime owl painting we’ll be working on together!
Get into the Halloween spirit with this painting!
The class is on Saturday, October 23rd from 2 – 4 PM. This is the only family class we will have in this winter’s series.
One parent/child ticket is $40 and covers supplies for one painting. Additional children and canvases can be added to your ticket purchase. RSVP your canvas(es) today!
This Friday’s Art Walk will feature Emma Norman’s work in our first floor studio gallery. Emma is one of CAL’s studio artists. We recently had a chance to ask her a few questions to better know her and her work. You’re invited to meet the artist at the reception: Friday, October 1, 2021, 5-7 PM.
from “In the Night of Day”, currently on exhibit at CAL through December.
What is your background?
I was born in Hawaii in 1988 and grew up in Vermont and Washington, D.C. I went to Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, and completed a Master’s in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier in 2017. In addition to photography, I have also spent many years working in the coffee industry. I recently moved back to Vermont after a decade of living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
When and where did you start pursuing your art?
My dad is a novelist and my mom is a poet, and they encouraged me to explore the arts from a young age. I took my first photography class at 11 years old in a repurposed Maryland amusement park called Glen Echo. I had a great photography teacher in high school named Karen Keating, who also ran the Glen Echo darkroom. She encouraged me to attend the Maine Photographic Workshops (now the Maine Media Workshops) where I learned darkroom techniques and alternative processes from the talented cyanotypist Brenton Hamilton. When I was 15, I began a mentorship with East Montpelier photographer and master printer Andrew Kline.
Who and what has influenced you the most ?
In addition to my teachers, my early influences were photographers Sally Mann, Francesca Woodman, and Claude Cahun. I cast a wide net of inspiration, from writers to musicians to other photographers and visual artists.
How would you best describe your style?
I try to strike a balance between the formal and intimate. I like to explore narrative, memory, historicity, queer representation, and everyday life. Someone once told me I have a “promiscuous sensibility” which I took to mean that my influences are very eclectic. I have also been described as a magpie- I guess I am a collector and a maximalist! I tend to think of my work as pretty straightforward, though, and not overly reliant on concept.
Do you have any dreams or inspirations you are currently pursuing or would like to create?
I am currently working on a long term photography and oral history project called See My Heart, about a friend of mine from San Francisco. I met Morgan when I was working as a barista at Pinhole Coffee in Bernal Heights, San Francisco. I soon realized that my new friend was exceptional in myriad ways, and I became interested in helping to share her incredible life stories with the public through the form of an artist book.
Morgan has performed comedic autobiographical storytelling since the 80s, and has a successful woodcraft business. While she has entertained countless audiences with vulnerable (and hilariously rendered) stories of her gender transition from male to female, See My Heart explores the stories which haven’t made it onto the stage. This book offers a glimpse beyond Morgan’s gender and into the untold personal experiences of a talented woodworker, an important community member, and a cherished friend.
Morgan in Her Element, Emma Norman
See My Heart is also the story of a friendship between two queer people of different generations (I’m 33 and Morgan is almost 70!) who’ve come together to ensure that her stories of adventure, survival, addiction, recovery, transition, love, loss, and triumph are not lost to history. Rather, we want to uplift and amplify these unique memories and present them in the timeless, fine-art medium of an artist book. I have a GoFundMe set up if you would be interested in helping me to complete this exciting project.
Our first floor Studio Gallery is sponsored by The Drawing Board, Montpelier’s arts supply and framing shop.
Located in B5 (basement level), the SHARE Room is open for public use. It’s a self-serve swap room for usable art materials. The room is open any time the CAL building is open: Monday – Friday from 8 am – 5 pm and on the weekends from 10 am to 4 pm.
As the Surplus Hub for Artistic Resource Exchange, the SHARE Room is designed with these goals in mind:
Divert reusable items from the waste stream: please share your art materials with others.
Offers low-cost access to materials: art supplies can be expensive and hard to find. It’s FREE to use the SHARE Room
Easy and convenient swapping: come by when it’s convenient for you. No appointments needed. Take whatever you want to use.
Today’s items include: frames, ribbons, scrap wood, magazine and more. Every day is different. We only ask that items left behind are useable for the next person. No trash, please!
We can also host a swap event for your group! Please email us to schedule one: info@cal-vt.org
We are grateful for the general operational support of the Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Humanities Council, and the City of Montpelier for their support of our work, including the SHARE Room.
