classes & camps

Early Release Days at Horton and Margaret Pollard Middle Schools:
Arts Enrichment Workshops in Creative Writing, Dramatic Arts, and Dance! Now Planning New Pilot Program for Fall!

WE ARE CURRENTLY EVALUATING INTEREST FOR FALL SEMESTER, 2012. IF INTERESTED, PLEASE EMAIL info@chathamarts.org, and list  "Early Release Day Programs" in the Subject Line.

AT HORTON MIDDLE SCHOOL - Broadway Bound Drama Intensives! Learn the essence of musical theatre with Broadway Bound instructors, Erin Dangler and Angela Sigl. Workshops cover theatrical exercises, improvisational techniques, vocalization, scene work and choreography. Students gain an understanding of stage directions and how to put all the pieces together to become a triple threat under the big lights!

AT MARGARET POLLARD MIDDLE SCHOOL

Building Fictional Worlds with Instructor Mimi Herman

Do you like to create your own fictional worlds? Do you imagine characters living elaborate lives in ancient worlds, exploring the universe in the future, or inhabiting a country much like our own, but with your own special twist?

In this workshop, you'll get to create the fictional world of your dreams.  You’ll begin by building a three-dimensional map of your world, using a variety of art supplies.  Then you’ll explore your world in words--creating characters, landscapes, myths and history to populate your fictional place.

Whether you enjoy writing, art, filmmaking or video games, this workshop will give you the chance to create an amazing world you can share with others.

Introduction to Digital Photography

Roylee Duvall
Location: Pittsboro Community House

One Day Workshop: Date Moved to Spring, TBA

Fee:
$125

Learn how to capture, edit, and produce top quality images. By mastering digital camera tricks and techniques, you gain access to a new world rarely obtained by photographers with conventional  film photography. Students should have a digital camera with manual exposure control. We will spend three hours on lecture & discussion and four hours in the field & reviewing work.

To Register for this One Day Special Workshop, Purchase Here:

Documentary Photography Workshop: A Day in the Life of a Small Town

Anna Blackshaw
Location: Pittsboro Community House
One-Day Workshop TBA
$125

Documentary photography is about using images to tell stories. This is a 2-day documentary photography course about learning to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

In this course we will work to develop your photographers eye.  What are the elements that make a photograph interesting? How can you use light and shadow and composition more confidently to make your images tell a more powerful story?  How do you take photographs of strangers? We will spend the first part of the course looking at and discussing some iconic documentary images and talking about those elements, as well as  practical topics such as the finding and photographing of documentary subjects.

This course will help you find new and interesting ways to photograph things that interest you, but will also help you gain the skills and confidence to photograph people, including strangers, with grace and humanity.

For this course, we will explore the small towns of Chatham County. We will fan out with shooting assignments meant to challenge you and encourage new perspectives in an effort to paint a picture of the what makes these small and historical towns interesting. We will spend class time reviewing the images and will go out into the field again.

African and African American Artists of the Southeastern U.S., 1700 - Present

Catherine Howard
Location: Briar Chapel

$50 for one day workshop

Saturday, May 12, 1 - 5 pm
Join us as we explore how the vibrant and violent culture of the Southeastern United States impacted the creation and circulation of visual artwork by artists of African descent.  We will study the broad spectrum of perspectives about blackness and desire, "otherness" and primitivism, power and representation, and the contested notion of a global world of art.  Included artists must have been born in the Southeastern US and/or spent formative periods of their careers here, such as Joshua Johnson, Henry Tanner, Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, William H Johnson, and Kara Walker.

New! Like a good wine pairing, sometimes some courses go even better when combined with others. Take this one alongside "Getting Unstuck: A Creative Course for Artists" in order to broaden your observational skills and to free your imagination.

Contemporary Art History: Exploring the Motivations Behind 20th and 21st Century Art

Catherine Howard
Location: Briar Chapel

TBA, 1-5pm

Fee: $50

What we consider to be “contemporary art” is dependent on participation, interaction, and dialogue.  We will start with a functional overview of the basic art period “isms” [fauvism, abstract expressionism, minimalism, etc, etc] and art criticism vocabulary [semiotics, aesthetics, commercialization, etc, etc].  However, the core purpose of this course is to discuss the artistic motivations and historical context behind the stylistic shifts during the 20^th and 21^st centuries.  How did industrialization and urbanization create the modern “artist”?  How did changing social structures affect who could be an “artist” and what an “artist” should be discussing?  Who in the heck is the “audience” anyway?

In essence, this class perpares you to be the quintessential obnoxious person who's all-too-ready to explain “what this piece means” while walking around a museum.

After the completion of the course, participants will be invited to join me at CAM Raleigh on Saturday October 22 at noon to utilize your new analytical muscles.

New! Like a good wine pairing, sometimes some courses go even better when combined with others. Take this one alongside "Getting Unstuck: A Creative Course for Artists" in order to broaden your observational skills and to free your imagination.

Getting Unstuck: A Creative Course for Artists, Ages 16+

Matt Zigler
Location: Briar Chapel
New Dates TBA. If interested, please email info@chathamarts.org

$150 plus supplies

Are you a painter, sculptor, ceramicist, photographer, digital artist, etc. who is looking for ways to expand your ideas and push past the confines of your medium? 

This class is designed to help you unlock your mental potential to express who you are regardless of your preferred medium.  By examining the ideas behind our work and why we make it, we can take a journey o that epitomizes what it means to be an artist, a creator, a maker of objects rather than a painter, sculptor or photographer alone.

This class is part seminar, part critique and part studio course.

Some work will be done outside of class.  By looking at the work of conceptual and interdisciplinary artists, by talking to peers with backgrounds from other disciplines and by challenging your ideas of what art is and what you are capable of, you will find in this course new sources of inspiration to expand your current work and to generate new work.

New! Like a good wine pairing, sometimes some courses go even better when combined with others. Take this one alongside "Contemporary Art History" in order to broaden your observational skills and to break free of tunnel vision.

Kids Make Art!! Ages 4-7

Instructor: Nancy Jacobs
Location: Briar Chapel

Dates: Tuesdays, April 17 - May 22, 2:30 - 4:30 pm

Fee: $75 plus supplies

Do you like to draw, paint, and make  things with your hands?  Then this class will be fun for you.  You’ll get to make at least one  project each time and learn about lots of different ways to make art.

We’ll work with paint, crayons, paper mache, cloth, salt clay, as well as string, wire and found objects.   We’ll also be learning about other cultures and artists as we make these artworks.

Summer Percussion Camp with Matt Vooris!

Instructor: Matt Vooris
Location: Briar Chapel

AGES 5 - 10

Dates: August 6 - 10, 9 am - 4 pm

Fee: $241 plus supplies

Summer Percussion Camp is a full day camp for kids age 5-10. Beginners are welcome! Campers are divided into skill level groups and guided though a course on how to play drums and percussion. We'll begin with the roots of classical, Afro-Cuban, rock and jazz music. Campers will then compose their own beats and songs over this historical foundation. Studying rhythm will help campers with melody and harmony, too! We will all dance, sing and work hard at our rhythms. 

A final presentation (with pot luck reception) will happen the last day of camp, Aug. 10, at 1:00 PM. Mark your calendars and tell the family!

Please come prepared each day with a packed lunch, two separate snacks, and a sturdy, reusable water bottle.