VERO BEACH — When summer camp starts this week at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, mayhem may reign while the sun shines, as some 700 children “take up every available space,” according to Education Director Marshall Adams. Come nightfall, though, the museum’s education wing will belong to an altogether different bunch seeking diversion from the doldrums of summer.
There, for about the price of a cocktail at a beachside bar, aspiring artists can spend three hours in the cool quiet of the museum, learning to create or just dismantling a mental block.
Nearly all the weekly classes, held every Tuesday or Wednesday evening for 10 weeks, cost only $135, discounted to $125 for museum members.
“It’s amazing when you break it down,” says Marshall.
With sign-up apparently in the doldrums as well, only a couple of the adult offerings had met the 10-student minimum earlier this month. Marshall says the museum will consider holding certain classes with less than that number.
“Summer has a less hectic feel to it,” says Shotsi Lajoie, a long-time faculty member. Lajoie, a psychotherapist as well as sculptor and painter, offers a new seminar in the creative process, hoping to attract students who are “stuck” in a creative endeavor.
“It’s a seminar to tackle all the creative blocks,” she says, hoping to sign up “writers, actors, musicians, needle-pointers, anyone who has a creative project and needs some guidance to get it done and to get it to the market.”
She says her class will look at ways to “lock on and lock off” their creative projects while leading busy lives, going from daily chores to creative tasks and back to the mundane again.
“Whenever you’re creating something, it’s never existed before. So there are all sorts of problems to make it work and get it done. This seminar breaks it into pieces.”
Painter Deborah Gooch is offering a new class in Interpretive Painting, to learn to “use your inner thoughts and feelings to develop your subject matter,” she says.
“People wrack their brains to come up with something unique,” says Gooch, whose contemporary works verge on the surreal, often involving comedic elements including whimsy, caricature and costume. “You don’t know how often people say to me, ‘Where do you come up with your subject? How did you go there?’ I’m trying to get people to express their inner thoughts more. It takes a bit of confidence but that’s what sets their paintings apart.”
That class will work on larger canvases, which Gooch finds more freeing.
In addition, she is offering for the third time a class in the creative process, intended to help experienced artists to break out of routine. In that class, artists can work in the medium of their choice.
Gooch finds value in working around other people and says the relaxed evening classes tend to include visits from other classes that provoke conversation about the art.
“What artists need so badly is discussion,” she says. “The thing the museum tries to offer is a network.”
She says looking at the works of others and becoming aware of what’s going on in the art world helps people examine their own artistic process.
“It’s about exposure and becoming aware of different directions you can take.”
Another innovation this session is a course in how to incorporate faux-finish techniques into painting, taught by muralist Christine Thomas.
“You can use faux-finish techniques in the background, you can do a border, or you can use texturized paint if you want a more three-dimensional look.”
She gives as an example one of her own recent paintings.
“I did a scene of my daughter in the ruins of a church in Costa Rica. I used textured paint to make the wall look like brick.”
She also explains the use of faux-finishing materials like glazes and extenders.
“A lot of people who like acrylics don’t know some of the products that are out there today. They’ve increased immensely.”
Currently at work on the Vero Beach Art Club’s mural in the downtown Community Center, Thomas has used her faux-finishing techniques professionally in homes and businesses here since the 1990s.
“I love evening classes,” says Thomas. “I’m a night person. My productivity level has always been good at night. The energy is different when there’s not as much hubbub going on.”
Photographer Aric Attas will offer a first-time class on Photoshop techniques.
“It’s designed as a workflow class to teach you how to use Photoshop as a tool as opposed to a feature,” says Attas, who has a tech-based day job designing web sites, among other things.
Working from a computer with a large display while his students work on laptops, Attas says his classes will provide a guided tutorial through the stages from “camera to computer to print or web.”
“Every photographer should be using Photoshop,” he says. “It’s not just getting rid of blemishes and losing 15 pounds. Every digital image requires some type of processing before you go to print. It’s a mix of the general color correcting and sharpening that you would do in a traditional dark room to really getting the most out of your digital file – your negative, so to speak.”
Attas says there has been “a ton of interest” in a Photoshop class.
That course had the strongest sign-up numbers along with Sean Clinton’s ever popular raku pottery class. A studio class with a surcharge for materials is for more advanced pottery students interested in developing glazing and surface decoration techniques and working with larger pieces.
There are also offerings for beginning artists.
Instructor Lis Bech is offering a course in watercolor and water-related media, emphasizing technique more than a finished product.
Students will practice giving the surface of the painting texture through scraping tools, stamps and resists as Bech teaches the basics of color theory and mixing.
Various brush techniques will also be taught, including dry brush, glazing, direct painting, and washes.
Elise Carter offers beginning courses in drawing and painting that include technical exercises in still life, landscape, portrait, and abstract design methods.
“It builds their confidence,” she says. She says more advanced students sometimes take her class as a refresher.
A painter who recently had a solo show at Lighthouse Gallery downtown, and a long-time instructor at the museum, Carter says her evening classes tend to fill with middle-aged people who work, as well as high school students looking to supplement home-schooling.
She says she also gets a number of students from St. Edward’s School.
“The reason I always teach in the evening is to get the sense of community,” she says. “I get a nice range of students.”
“The nice thing about evening classes is you don’t have to rush back to do something else, like work,” says Gooch. “You know you’re going to go home and relax for the rest of the evening. What we really need is a nice wine bar set up for these classes.”