This Fall is the start of the eighth year of the Texas Hill Country Atelier, and the second year of the non-profit corporation we grew into. Our 501(c)(3) organization offers Classes and Workshops in addition to the 3-4 year Core Atelier Program. Saturday Life Drawing is also entering its eighth year!
This summer we completed four workshops, including the second annual painting workshop by my teacher, internationally recognized artist Tenaya Sims. Tenaya’s July workshop sold out, and his public talk at Butt-Holdsworth Library was well attended. The attendees came from surrounding Hill Country areas, including San Antonio and Austin. Tenaya came all the way from Seattle, and we had a student come from as far as New Mexico for my Egg Tempera Workshop.
Still, the heart of the Atelier is the Core Atelier Program. Ten to twelve students, each at different stages of the program, comprise a diverse and tight-knit community. I love seeing the student-artists bond – people who come from a wide range of experience, age groups, political orientations. (Of course, it helps that our studio guidelines stipulate no talking about politics!) No matter what those differences may be, our artists help each other and genuinely care for one another. Truly Art transcends socioeconomic, demographic, and political boundaries.
“This is the power of art: The power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness.” ―Maria Popova
The Atelier community radiates out from the Core Program to include students of our Classes and Workshops, as well as artists who attend our Open Studio Drawing sessions. Our local and regional community is also a part of a national and international community. This summer, one of our Core Program students, Patricia McCormick, attended the Florence Academy of Art (FAA). There, she connected with familiar drawing lessons and like-minded artists as well as the founder of FAA, my friend Daniel Graves. We are excited to hear all about her experience studying in Italy!
I also had a chance to attend a workshop this summer. In upstate New York, I studied with Michael Grimaldi, head of the drawing department of the New York Academy of Art. Grimaldi is a brilliant artist/scientist in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci. He established a course at Drexel University College of Medicine so that his students could study anatomy alongside medical students. His understanding of anatomy informs the gestural, the proportional, and the perspectival considerations of figure drawing. My eyes were opened to just how much those three aspects of drawing can be ascertained by anatomical clues!
Back home in downtown Kerrville, most every Saturday morning, Brian Mantz (my Life Drawing partner) and I are at the Heart of the Hills Farmer’s Market. There, in the Atelier’s own parking lot, we find yet more connections and surprises – art teachers from the public schools we attended and artists who have chosen to move to Kerrville to do art. We also meet artists who are excited about the Museum of Western Art’s recent exhibit by Quong Ho and Scott Christensen as well as the Juliette Aristides books from which we show and tell. One Saturday, Roger Parsons, our Landscape Painting Class instructor did a live painting demonstration.
Kerrville is connecting with the wider art world, and we are a part of that reach! Join us in any of our four levels of programming: Core Atelier, Classes in Landscape Painting, various Workshops throughout the year, and/or Open Studio Life Drawing.
I am absolutely thrilled about the Workshop Artists we are lining up for next year! You’ll soon learn who will be teaching as we make announcements for 2025 Workshops. I’ve dropped several names already, and that is because community is a significant component of the Atelier world.
Meantime, look for the upcoming announcements about our December 6th party. Over 30 of our Atelier artists are involved in this a very fun event, the Art Scramble. Save the date and hold on to your hat!
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