April workshops

April kicked off our workshop series at Richmond Public Library, including youth participants from Aspire as well as the larger community. We are beginning to establish a rhythm, with check-in questions, sketchbook time, group games, art making, and reflection each day.

Our first workshop focused on using drawing, lettering and collage to make stickers, which could be used to personalize our sketchbooks. We also held a sticker swap at the end of the workshop, so participants could appreciate each other's work and take home an artwork by another artist in the room.

As we worked on our creations, cutting, gluing, sketching, and laughing, we chatted about our personal style and voice as artists. We noticed what aesthetic of collage materials we were pulled towards, and the tone we wanted to create with out stickers (silly, ethereal, dark, cute etc). A guiding intention for this project as a whole is to explore how our personal identities and backgrounds can inform our artwork and creative expression. This felt like a fun and gentle way in to that question.

Our second workshop in April was all about creating personal symbols through stamp making. We discussed the use of symbols in art, and brainstormed how aspects of our identity (interests, personality, world view etc) could be translated into a stamp. This was a helpful jumping off point to learn more about each other.

We then added out stamps to a collaborative banner. I'm hoping we can keep adding more contributions to the banner in future workshops, so it slowly becomes a representation of this diverse and wonderful group.

We ended each workshop with reflection as a group, and invited participants to jot down a word that described their experience: