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Exploring Underbrush: Painting Plants with Acrylic with Diamond

Are you interested in growing your acrylic paint skills and know-how? Headwaters Music & Arts hosts Exploring Underbrush: Painting Plants with Acrylic, a four week workshop with Northwoods based artist and long time teacher, Diamond. This workshop is for adults at any level of painting experience. The class will spend 8 hours getting to know acrylics through Diamond’s unique perspective 6-8pm each Wednesday starting November 9 through November 30. The group will touch on color mixing, depth, composition, and capturing shadows and light with an eye to the botanical world. Participants will leave the workshop with multiple plant pieces and with a deeper understanding of how to capture a leafy scene with confidence.

An artist and explorer at heart, Diamond has been making a career as an artist for more than a decade with both her personal work and employment and residencies at art organizations around Northern Minnesota. She received a 2022 Individual Artist Grant from Region 2 Arts Council to take her latest body of acrylic paintings, Wild Whimsy of the Northwoods, around the state of Minnesota where it just wrapped up its most recent exhibition at Hutchinson Center for the Arts (Hutchinson, MN) this past September. Diamond paints in her own distinctive style that she describes as “postmodern-narrative wildlife.” She makes an effort to paint everyday as she focuses on any flora and fauna that strikes her fancy. She creates unique originals as well as commissioned pet portraits. Not just an avid painter, Diamond also works as the Marketing & Web Manager at Headwaters Music & Arts, owner and operator of Wild Growth Engineering, and an art instructor to folks of all ages and abilities. She currently lives in the Laporte (MN) area with her husband, Cassidy, and beloved cat, Lady Gray. They live in a patch of forest surrounded by their squirrel and fox neighbors in their as-of-yet unfinished home studio that the duo began constructing together in 2016.

The cost to attend Exploring Underbrush: Painting Plants with Acrylic is $150 per person. Space is limited, advance registration required.

You can register here!

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Give to the Max 2022 kicks off!

We have done a lot since November 1, 2021. Thanks to a mixture of community contributions and grants, we have been able to:

👏Offer music and arts scholarships for ALL of our youth programming.
👏Increase our programming capacity by building a wall to separate our pottery and visual arts studios as well as build 2 additional private lesson studios.
👏Afford lighting improvements that both improved our buildings energy efficiency and made our space more welcoming for creative eyes.
👏 Make our space warmer and even more energy efficient with added heating in the pottery and visual art classrooms.
👏 And offer an even wider variety of programming and events for all.

It has been a productive twelve months! In the next twelve months we want to do more of the same. We rely on individual donations and sustaining membership contributions to keep us going, and to help us stay on solid ground as we fulfill our mission to provide opportunities for creativity through instruction and inspire the community through music and the arts.

GiveMN links donors with organizations that are working to make Minnesota a more generous place. This statewide, three week long, giving campaign starts November 1 and wraps up November 17. We invite you to join us for Minnesota’s giving holiday! And, as an added bonus, starting November 1 Schmitt Music commits to a cash match of up to $500 to Headwaters Music & Arts.

We are continually guided by our vision to Seek Music, Engage the Arts, and Build Community. This year we are celebrating 30 years of music and heART and we could not have got here without you!

You can give now here. THANK YOU for supporting Headwaters Music & Arts!

P.s. We are holding a ukulele giveaway through the month of november. The uke was generously donated by Schmitt Music and anybody can sign up to win but when you contribute any amount to Headwaters Nov. 1-17 in person or online you will automatically be added to the list.

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Dan Navarro Visits Bemidji September 3 & 4

Headwaters Music & Arts welcomes nationally touring musician and songwriter, Dan Navarro, to Bemidji September 3 and 4 with a concert and a guitar workshop for ages 13-adult.

Dan Navarro’s long and eclectic resume includes “songwriter,” “recording artist,” “singer,” “voice actor,” “road warrior” and “arts advocate” in its range of credits. His music probes life at its most resonant. In his rich baritone, he sings songs of heart and insight, steeped in experience, soulful tales from a long road well-traveled.

Dan started his career writing songs for a diverse array of artists including Pat Benatar (the Grammy®-nominated “We Belong”) The Bangles, Jackson Browne, Dave Edmunds, The Temptations, Dionne Warwick, The Triplets, Dutch star Marco Borsato, and Austin outlaw legend Rusty Weir.

In the 1990’s and 2000’s, Dan worked with Eric Lowen as they recorded and toured as the acclaimed acoustic duo Lowen & Navarro until Eric’s retirement in 2009. Dan has transitioned smoothly into a busy solo career over the past decade, touring nationally almost constantly.

Dan's long awaited first true studio-recorded album, "Shed My Skin" was released in 2019 and was well worth the wait. Recorded and produced by Steve Postell it, of course, features Dan Navarro / vocals, guitar, percussion, Steve Postell / Guitars, Jon Ossman / upright bass, Brendan Buckley /drums, Peter Adams / piano, Phil Parlapiano / accordion, David Glaser / mandolin and Debra Dobkin / percussion.

He has a parallel career as a voice actor and singer, in films like The Playmobil Movie, Pirates of the Caribbean 5, The Book Of Life, Rio (on the Oscar®-nominated “Real In Rio”), Happy Feet, The Lorax, Ice Age (2 & 3) ; TV series Turbo Fast, Prison Break, Family Guy and American Dad; records with Neil Young, Andrea Bocelli, Luis Miguel, Jose Feliciano, Janiva Magness, and Jon Anderson of Yes; hit video games Fallout 4 and Uncharted 4; and hundreds of TV ads for Subaru, Shakey’s, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Honda, Nationwide and more. Most recently, Dan sang on six Lin-Manuel Miranda songs in the Disney Film ENCANTO and, in Feb 2022, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.

And now… Dan’s new album, "Horizon Line,” is finished and set for an August release. Produced by multiple Grammy®-winner Jim Scott (Tom Petty, Wilco, Dixie Chicks, as well as the first five Lowen & Navarro albums) over a dozen sessions in mid-2021 and a dozen more in spring 2022. You can pre-orders your album now at DanNavarro.com

Dan has a 26-year-old son, thinks sleep is for babies and is a known abuser of acoustic guitars.

You can see Dan perform live in concert Saturday, September 3 at 7:30 pm and you can join him for his guitar workshop for all levels of songwriters (beginners to advanced are all welcome!) 1-4 pm Sunday, September 4. Both the concert and the workshop will be held at Headwaters Music & Arts Performance Hall (519 MN Ave NW, Bemidji). Concert tickets cost $25/person and the cost to register for the guitar workshop is $50. Register or find out more about Headwaters workshops and music events here.