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Class Description:

Explore and experiment with various fiber-art techniques by transforming two-dimensional fabric drawings and paintings into three-dimensional, plushie soft sculptures inspired by nature, abstraction and the DAM’s contemporary Textile Arts and Fashion collection.

Students will walk through and learn about the collections, focusing on textile work that utilizes drawing and painting elements. Through the exploration of the DAM’s collections, students will learn how expansive textile and fiber arts can be, inspiring them to make their own fiber art. The class will focus on simple and accessible techniques. Students will learn how to paint on fabric by using fabric paint and paint markers, and be inspired to make their own shapes, colors, patterns, etc. Students will then learn how to transform their two-dimensional fabric pieces into three-dimensional soft sculptures by learning simple sewing techniques and skills. This is an experimental approach to soft sculpture where students are free to explore, play and try new techniques all while being introduced to the basics of fabric painting, drawing, and sewing.

What to Expect:

The first day of class will be informational and learning based, we will walk through the galleries and view a presentation. The rest of the day-to-day class experience will comprise of art demos and creating soft sculpture pieces. This is a primarily a project-based approach where experimentation in painting, drawing, and sewing will be encouraged.

Students can choose to make one large soft sculpture or two medium soft sculpture pieces.

Some knowledge of hand-sewing is encouraged but not required. Students must be comfortable holding a needle and thread or utilizing fabric glue.

Students should have an interest in painting and drawing on fabric and understand that this is the primary focus of the class.

Timeline:

Week 1

• Intro/presentation about teacher and soft sculpture techniques, history, etc.

• Explore collection in galleries, inspiration sources, beginning sketching, drawing, and documenting in classroom or gallery for inspiration for soft sculpture

Week 2

• Finish Sketches and drawing on paper

• Teacher demonstration about fabric drawing/painting

• Students begin sketching and fabric

• Students can read up on resources, etc. as they might have to wait for fabric paint to dry in between painting and drawing layers

Week 3

• Students finish drawing and painting on fabric

• Teacher demo into hand sewing techniques

• Students begin sewing, stuffing, and adorning soft sculpture

Week 4

• Students finish sewing, stuffing and adding details to piece

• If time, students share out their finished pieces with the class

Class Make-up Day Policy:

If a class or workshop needs to be cancelled due to inclement weather or teacher illness, a “make-up” day will be scheduled on a FRIDAY or SATURDAY as the educator’s schedule allows.

Materials:

Students will purchase their own materials and should expect to spend $50-80. We partner with Meininger’s for local shopping, purchase a kit of your required materials online for in-store pickup, or purchase the items individually.

Educator:

Holly Nordeck currently works and lives in Golden, CO. She graduated from Colorado State University with a BFA and minor in Art Business in 2016, her visual art has exhibited at Lincoln Center (Fort Collins), Arvada Center for the Arts (Arvada), StoreRoom (Denver), and Bell Projects (Denver). Nordeck has worked in cultural institutions since 2016, her focus is producing participatory events in collaboration with Colorado creatives. She is experienced in event production, creative consulting, public engagement experiences, and art focused facilitation.

https://www.holly-nordeck.com/

Class Description:

In this class, students will explore oil painting fundamentals in an accelerated format. They will survey the DAM’s collection and sketch from art within the galleries. Students will create individual pieces inspired by their research sketches, utilizing their newly built skills. The intent of this class is to bring each artist through the entire process of researching and creating a completed piece of work.

What to Expect:

Students will learn or in some cases relearn fundamental skills in addition to some tricks of the trade. This knowledge will help them work within the museum to sketch and generate ideas and bring those ideas into the studio to complete a finished project.

Timeline:

Week 1

• Focus on oil painting fundamentals

Week 2

• Focus on oil painting fundamentals

Week 3

• Gathering sketches and ideas in the museum’s galleries

Week 4

• Gathering sketches and ideas in the museum’s galleries

Week 5

• Painting in the classroom

Week 6

• Painting in the classroom

Class Cancellation Policy:

If a class or workshop needs to be cancelled due to inclement weather or teacher illness, a “make-up” day will be scheduled on a FRIDAY or SATURDAY as the educator’s schedule allows.

Materials:

Students will purchase their own materials and should expect to spend $60-100.

We partner with Meininger’s for local shopping, purchase a kit of your required materials online for in-store pickup, or purchase the below items individually.

Educator:

Born in Denver in 1972, Michael Dowling spent much of his early life as a typical kid apart from being an obsessive drawer. It wasn’t until the age of 25, and after several years studying various subjects as well as working in many fields, that Michael started painting. With that late beginning, Dowling dove full in and began studying extensively. At 28, he decided to sell a burgeoning art sales company and moved to Florence, Italy to focus on painting. He has since returned to his native Denver where he lives and works.

Michael Dowling's work has been characterized as a combination of traditional practices in realism and his explorations of mark, pattern, and color to disrupt that reality. In many compositions, figures presented as portrait, morph into their surreal self, and lone objects tell stories through their subtle positioning. These objects and characters sit in bizarre spaces with intentionally disrupted atmospheres in order to find further meaning within the imagery.

https://m2lr.com/artists/72-michael-dowling/

Class Description:

In Painting: Intermediate Oil, students will explore intermediate oil painting techniques in an accelerated format. They will survey the DAM’s collection and sketch from art within the galleries. Students will create individual pieces inspired by their research sketches, utilizing their newly built skills. The intent of this class is to build skill and guide each artist through the entire process of researching and creating a completed piece of work.

What to Expect:

Students will build upon their fundamental skills to learn and develop intermediate techniques, in addition to some tricks of the trade. This knowledge will help them work within the museum to sketch and generate ideas and bring those ideas into the studio to complete a finished project.

Timeline:

Week 1

• Focus on oil painting techniques

Week 2

• Focus on oil painting techniques

Week 3

• Gathering sketches and ideas in the museum’s galleries

Week 4

• Gathering sketches and ideas in the museum’s galleries

Week 5

• Painting in the classroom

Week 6

• Painting in the classroom

Class Cancellation Policy:

If a class or workshop needs to be cancelled due to inclement weather or teacher illness, a “make-up” day will be scheduled on a FRIDAY or SATURDAY as the educator’s schedule allows.

Materials:

Students will purchase their own materials and should expect to spend $60-100.

We partner with Meininger’s for local shopping, purchase a kit of your required materials online for in-store pickup, or purchase the items individually.

Educator:

Born in Denver in 1972, Michael Dowling spent much of his early life as a typical kid apart from being an obsessive drawer. It wasn’t until the age of 25, and after several years studying various subjects as well as working in many fields, that Michael started painting. With that late beginning, Dowling dove full in and began studying extensively. At 28, he decided to sell a burgeoning art sales company and moved to Florence, Italy to focus on painting. He has since returned to his native Denver where he lives and works.

Michael Dowling's work has been characterized as a combination of traditional practices in realism and his explorations of mark, pattern, and color to disrupt that reality. In many compositions, figures presented as portrait, morph into their surreal self, and lone objects tell stories through their subtle positioning. These objects and characters sit in bizarre spaces with intentionally disrupted atmospheres in order to find further meaning within the imagery.

https://m2lr.com/artists/72-michael-dowling

Class Description:

In this 6-week class, students will be introduced to weaving beyond the loom through techniques including book, card, and tapestry weaving. Students will learn how to construct simple, portable, “looms” using easy-to-find materials that can be adapted to any circumstance. Through each technique, students will learn about the basic elements of woven cloth and explore the design variations and possibilities offered by each weaving approach. The course will engage with the many examples of woven works from the museum’s Indigenous Arts of North America and Textile and Fashion Collections – many of which were created using similar techniques to those we will be using in class – as well as the work of contemporary weaving artists such as Sheila Hicks, Karolina Gnatowski, and Colorado-based artist Steven Frost.

What to Expect:

This class will include a mix of in-class demonstration, skill sharing, and making as well as group gallery visits and discussion. The compact and mobile formats of the looms will allow us to take our work beyond the classroom to draw inspiration from the galleries and the museum’s architecture while connecting with themes of space, place, and portability. Through observing works in the collection and learning new skills, we will take time to reflect on how weaving techniques are engaged across cultures and textile traditions, our positions as learners and artists, and our own relationships with textile histories. Students will leave the class with three sample weavings along with their handmade loom components.

Timeline:

Week 1 – Introductions + Book Weaving

• Introductions and class overview

• Lecture/demonstration: Intro to weaving

• Demonstration/activity: Tapestry weaving on a book loom

• Demonstration/Activity: Basic weave structures

• For next time: bring backstrap materials

Week 2 – Backstrap Weaving

• Re-introductions, questions/reflections from last class

• Demonstration/activity: Cutting off and finishing book weavings (15 mins)

• Slide lecture: Contemporary weaving artists + Backstrap Weaving

• Demonstration/Activity: Setting up the backstrap loom

• For next time: optional reading

Week 3 – Backstrap Weaving + Gallery Visit

• Gallery visits to woven textile objects

• Demonstration/activity: Weaving on a backstrap loom in museum space

• For next week: Bring materials for card weaving

Week 4 – Card Weaving

• Lecture/demonstration: Tablet weaving

• Prepare cards and card looms

• For next week: Optional reading

Week 5 – Card Weaving + Gallery Visit

• Welcome and gather

• Group reading discussion

• Demonstration/activity: Card weaving

• Gallery visit

Week 6 – Card Weaving + Conclusion

• Card weaving in museum space

• Return to classroom, finishing card weavings

• Share work and wrap up

Class Make-up Day Policy:

If a class or workshop needs to be cancelled due to inclement weather or teacher illness, a “make-up” day will be scheduled on a FRIDAY or SATURDAY as the educator’s schedule allows.

Materials:

Students will purchase their own materials and should expect to spend $50-70.

We partner with Meininger’s for local shopping, purchase a kit of your required materials online for in-store pickup, or purchase the items individually.

Educator:

Etta Sandry is an artist, educator, and facilitator currently based in Boulder, Colorado. Rooted in weaving, her interdisciplinary work is situated in the expanded material practices field between craft, contemporary art, and creative research. She has exhibited her work in the United States and Canada and was the 2022 Experimental Weaver in Residence at the Unstable Design Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she now conducts research as a PhD student. Etta completed her MFA in the Fibre & Material Practices program at Concordia University where she also held positions teaching fiber structures and critical thinking & writing. She has over ten years of experience working as an organizer and administrator in arts communities, including roles as a board member at the artist-run centre articule in Montreal and as a volunteer staff in ACRE Residency’s fiber studio in Wisconsin.

www.ettasandry.com

Throughout his nearly 50 year career, highly regarded photographer and educator Dawoud Bey (American, born 1953) has explored the importance of community and weight of history through his compelling portraits and landscapes. From 1988 to 1991, he photographed African Americans in the streets of various American cities. For this project entitled Street Portraits, Bey asked a cross section of these communities to pose for him, creating a space of self-presentation and performance in their urban environments.

Please join us for a conversation between Dawoud Bey and Eric Paddock, Curator of Photography at the Denver Art Museum, to learn more about the artist’s process, inspiration, and the importance of this earlier work to his career as a whole. This program is presented in connection with his exhibition Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits.

Please note that the Art Emergency: Sendak Edition play runs 45 minutes long. Please purchase your play ticket one hour before or after your entry time to the Wild Things: Art of Maurice Sendak exhibition.

COMPOSING COLOR: THE WORLD OF ALMA THOMAS

American artist Alma Thomas once wrote “Love comes by looking.” In this multi-session course, take a closer look at the artist, her art, and her world. Learn about Thomas’s creative philosophies and inspiration, fall in love with her eye for color and pattern, and dive into the deeper context of her long life and impactful career.

Session #1 – Alma Thomas: The Creative Age

September 14th, 2024 - 2:00 PM

Alma Thomas’s long life and late-career breakthroughs prove that creativity gets better with time. Like other artists who were prolific well into older age, Thomas’s creativity dynamically evolved in her later decades. In this course session, we’ll celebrate Thomas’s vibrant abstractions from the 1950s-1970s and consider her journey and others’ who worked well into their seventies, eighties, and beyond.

Session #2 – Alma’s World

October 19th, 2024 - 2:00 PM

Alma Thomas’s life was as rich and complex as her paintings. The third session of this course focuses on the larger context in which Thomas lived and worked, paying particular attention to the artistic, social, and political movements that influenced Thomas’s development as an artist.

Session #3 – The Meaning and Making of Color

November 16th, 2024 - 2:00 PM

For Alma Thomas, the “spirit and living soul of the world” was manifest through colors. She used art’s most luscious resource brilliantly, concentrating on what she called “beauty and happiness,” rather than urgencies of “inhumanity.” This session offers deep context for how and why artists throughout history have found, manipulated, coded, and celebrated color to achieve staggeringly diverse ends. It’s the ultimate shape-shifter. Color produces happiness—and it also registers power, privilege, spirituality, symbolism, technologies, emotion, and reason. With color at the forefront, artists create endless pathways to expression and offer us inexhaustible insights.

Presented by Stella Paul, writer and educator, author of Chromaphilia: The Story of Color in Art

COMPOSING COLOR: THE WORLD OF ALMA THOMAS

American artist Alma Thomas once wrote “Love comes by looking.” In this multi-session course, take a closer look at the artist, her art, and her world. Learn about Thomas’s creative philosophies and inspiration, fall in love with her eye for color and pattern, and dive into the deeper context of her long life and impactful career.

Session #1 – Alma Thomas: The Creative Age

September 14th, 2024 - 2:00 PM

Alma Thomas’s long life and late-career breakthroughs prove that creativity gets better with time. Like other artists who were prolific well into older age, Thomas’s creativity dynamically evolved in her later decades. In this course session, we’ll celebrate Thomas’s vibrant abstractions from the 1950s-1970s and consider her journey and others’ who worked well into their seventies, eighties, and beyond.

Session #2 – Alma’s World

October 19th, 2024 - 2:00 PM

Alma Thomas’s life was as rich and complex as her paintings. The third session of this course focuses on the larger context in which Thomas lived and worked, paying particular attention to the artistic, social, and political movements that influenced Thomas’s development as an artist.

Session #3 – The Meaning and Making of Color

November 16th, 2024 - 2:00 PM

For Alma Thomas, the “spirit and living soul of the world” was manifest through colors. She used art’s most luscious resource brilliantly, concentrating on what she called “beauty and happiness,” rather than urgencies of “inhumanity.” This session offers deep context for how and why artists throughout history have found, manipulated, coded, and celebrated color to achieve staggeringly diverse ends. It’s the ultimate shape-shifter. Color produces happiness—and it also registers power, privilege, spirituality, symbolism, technologies, emotion, and reason. With color at the forefront, artists create endless pathways to expression and offer us inexhaustible insights.

Presented by Stella Paul, writer and educator, author of Chromaphilia: The Story of Color in Art

COMPOSING COLOR: THE WORLD OF ALMA THOMAS

American artist Alma Thomas once wrote “Love comes by looking.” In this multi-session course, take a closer look at the artist, her art, and her world. Learn about Thomas’s creative philosophies and inspiration, fall in love with her eye for color and pattern, and dive into the deeper context of her long life and impactful career.

Session #3 – The Meaning and Making of Color

For Alma Thomas, the “spirit and living soul of the world” was manifest through colors. She used art’s most luscious resource brilliantly, concentrating on what she called “beauty and happiness,” rather than urgencies of “inhumanity.” This session offers deep context for how and why artists throughout history have found, manipulated, coded, and celebrated color to achieve staggeringly diverse ends. It’s the ultimate shape-shifter. Color produces happiness—and it also registers power, privilege, spirituality, symbolism, technologies, emotion, and reason. With color at the forefront, artists create endless pathways to expression and offer us inexhaustible insights.

Presented by Stella Paul, writer and educator, author of Chromaphilia: The Story of Color in Art

COMPOSING COLOR: THE WORLD OF ALMA THOMAS

American artist Alma Thomas once wrote “Love comes by looking.” In this multi-session course, take a closer look at the artist, her art, and her world. Learn about Thomas’s creative philosophies and inspiration, fall in love with her eye for color and pattern, and dive into the deeper context of her long life and impactful career.

Session #3 – The Meaning and Making of Color

For Alma Thomas, the “spirit and living soul of the world” was manifest through colors. She used art’s most luscious resource brilliantly, concentrating on what she called “beauty and happiness,” rather than urgencies of “inhumanity.” This session offers deep context for how and why artists throughout history have found, manipulated, coded, and celebrated color to achieve staggeringly diverse ends. It’s the ultimate shape-shifter. Color produces happiness—and it also registers power, privilege, spirituality, symbolism, technologies, emotion, and reason. With color at the forefront, artists create endless pathways to expression and offer us inexhaustible insights.

Presented by Stella Paul, writer and educator, author of Chromaphilia: The Story of Color in Art

This package includes a Contributing DAM Membership plus a CultureHaus add-on.

In addition to your DAM membership, CultureHaus members enjoy the following benefits:

• Complimentary access to quarterly CultureHaus programs like:
  • Museum after-hours events and curator tours
  • Collection talks and gallery visits
  • Behind-the-scenes moments with artists, museum personalities, and featured guests
• Free admission to all DAM lectures and talks by contemporary artists, visiting scholars, curators, authors, and more!
• Invitations to happy hour meetups before select museum programs
• Four complimentary vouchers to any Untitled: Artist Takeover
• Even greater discounts on courses, Creative Classes, and symposia
• First access and discounted tickets to the Annual Ball, a signature CultureHaus event

Create Playdate is an early-childhood program at the Denver Art Museum for families with children ages 0-5 (though siblings are always welcome too!). Create Playdate offers a range of experiences within the museum, including time close looking at art in the galleries, artmaking, and a participatory performance.

This program is included with the price of admission. Join in the creativity and fun!

Join us for our annual Día del Niño (Children's Day) festivities, a global celebration of children, with a wide variety of live music, dance performances, art making, and free general admission for everyone.

April 27 is a Free Day at the DAM. Advanced reservation is recommended, but not required.

Give to the Denver Art Museum's Annual Fund

Your 100% tax-deductible contribution supports inspiring art connections, powerful artist collaborations, community-minded programming at the Denver Art Museum. During these unprecedented times, your donation helps the museum reimagine how we connect in person and online through a series of new opportunities for visitors of all ages. Thank you for your support of the Denver Art Museum's annual fund.

This package includes a Dual DAM Membership plus a CultureHaus add-on.

In addition to your DAM membership, CultureHaus members enjoy the following benefits:

• Complimentary access to quarterly CultureHaus programs like:
  • Museum after-hours events and curator tours
  • Collection talks and gallery visits
  • Behind-the-scenes moments with artists, museum personalities, and featured guests
• Free admission to all DAM lectures and talks by contemporary artists, visiting scholars, curators, authors, and more!
• Invitations to happy hour meetups before select museum programs
• Four complimentary vouchers to any Untitled: Artist Takeover
• Even greater discounts on courses, Creative Classes, and symposia
• First access and discounted tickets to the Annual Ball, a signature CultureHaus event

This package includes a Family Plus DAM Membership plus a CultureHaus add-on.

In addition to your DAM membership, CultureHaus members enjoy the following benefits:

• Complimentary access to quarterly CultureHaus programs like:
  • Museum after-hours events and curator tours
  • Collection talks and gallery visits
  • Behind-the-scenes moments with artists, museum personalities, and featured guests
• Free admission to all DAM lectures and talks by contemporary artists, visiting scholars, curators, authors, and more!
• Invitations to happy hour meetups before select museum programs
• Four complimentary vouchers to any Untitled: Artist Takeover
• Even greater discounts on courses, Creative Classes, and symposia
• First access and discounted tickets to the Annual Ball, a signature CultureHaus event

This package includes an Individual DAM Membership plus a CultureHaus add-on.

In addition to your DAM membership, CultureHaus members enjoy the following benefits:

• Complimentary access to quarterly CultureHaus programs like:
  • Museum after-hours events and curator tours
  • Collection talks and gallery visits
  • Behind-the-scenes moments with artists, museum personalities, and featured guests
• Free admission to all DAM lectures and talks by contemporary artists, visiting scholars, curators, authors, and more!
• Invitations to happy hour meetups before select museum programs
• Four complimentary vouchers to any Untitled: Artist Takeover
• Even greater discounts on courses, Creative Classes, and symposia
• First access and discounted tickets to the Annual Ball, a signature CultureHaus event

Shiva Ahmadi orchestrates exquisitely crafted scenes of beauty and terror. Her vibrant fantasy realms are, upon closer inspection, macabre theaters of conflict where faceless figures engage in endless cycles of struggle and pain. Combining luminous colors and mystical beings with violent imagery, Ahmadi creates watercolor paintings, sculptures, and digital animations that illuminate global issues of migration, war, and brutality against marginalized peoples. Her work is informed by current events in the Middle East and the US, and inspired by Iranian, Turkish, and Indian book and miniature painting traditions.

In 2016, Ahmadi received the Anonymous Was A Woman Award and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work is in the collections of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Dallas Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Sonya Clark transforms everyday fiber materials hair, flags, and found fabrics into profound statements on race, culture, and class. Working with her chosen objects, Clark weaves, stitches, folds, braids, dyes, pulls, and snips threads of ideas to create new meanings. For more than thirty years, she has explored ideas of Blackness, uncovered little-known objects from American history, and sought to bring greater visibility to figures from the African diaspora.

Clark is professor of art at Amherst College, Massachusetts, and was Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of the Arts and Commonwealth Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond where she served as chair of the Craft/Material Studies Department from 2006 to 2017. Her work is the public collections of Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin, among others.
 
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion and the Modern and Contemporary Art department.

See Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak before the museum opens to the public. This time is exclusive for members.