Category: Art

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Headwaters Holds a Series of Teen Pottery Wheel Day Camps

Roll into summer with teen Pottery Wheel Camp! Headwaters Music and Arts holds its first ever Pottery Wheel Camps for teens, ages 13-18. With two options to choose from this summer, these seven session day camps are for teens who want to explore creating with clay on the wheel. Longtime Headwaters’ pottery instructor Tom Daly will lead this in-depth look at wheel throwing. Participants will dig into how to throw, different design and sculptural techniques, and glazing.

The first of these two camps will be held July 10-14, 12-3pm (with additional meetups July 20, 1-3pm & July 27, 2-3pm) and the second camp will be held couple weeks later July 31-Aug. 4, 12-3pm (with additional meetups Aug. 10, 1-3pm & Aug. 17, 2-3pm). The additional planned meetups will give participants a chance to glaze their fired bisqueware and then collect their final projects. Each camp will conclude with an ice cream party and social where participants will get to test their finished, wheel thrown, vessels. Teens are guaranteed to find camaraderie and leave feeling more comfortable with the wheel. All supplies provided.

The cost to attend either session of Pottery Wheel Camp is $185 per participant. Headwaters offers several scholarship and grant options for all of its youth programming in an effort to make their programming accessible for all.

Headwaters Music & Arts is an independent non-profit multidisciplinary organization whose mission is to provide opportunities for creativity through instruction and to inspire community through music and the arts. They offer a variety of summer camps for all ages.

Register or find out more about Pottery Wheel Camps  here.

 

Headwaters Scholarship options available for this program. Read more here.

 

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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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Headwaters Spring Planting Event

Headwaters Music & Arts has been celebrating brighter days with recent lighting projects at their downtown Bemidji campus. Having been the recipient of a 2022 Clean Energy Resource Teams Seed Grant for community-based clean energy efforts Headwaters has been doing their part with automated light switches and more efficient LED lighting throughout their building. In this eleventh round of CERT’s Seed Grants the group says, “CERT’s awarded seed grants to 74 innovative energy efficiency and renewable energy projects — over twice as many as last round — in communities from Warren to Winona, Morton to Mountain Iron, Long Prairie to Lindstrom."

Headwaters Music & Arts has taken concrete steps to reduce their carbon footprint and be more efficient in the last few years, including the CERT’s funded lighting improvements and their freshly installed mini split pump in the art studios. Headwaters invites the community to celebrate and learn more about these achievements on Earth Day April, 22, 2022 with a public native flora planting event at 4-5:30 pm. The fun, free, and educational event is a collaboration between Headwaters and Mississippi Headwaters Audubon Society that will include equal parts art and planting. Attendees will have the chance to plant native wildflowers and grasses that will be incorporated into Headwaters’ existing non-native perennial flower beds with the goal of beautification while also enhancing food, shelter, and nesting habitat for birds, native pollinators, and other beneficial insects. Participants will also have the chance to take part in a small painting project that day. This event may sound familiar to some who took part in a similar planting event that Headwaters and the Mississippi Headwaters Audubon Society held a few years ago. That successful project created a shady woodland pollinator garden right outside Headwaters’ front door to prevent erosion and offer habitat. Headwaters is excited and happy to create more flora spaces for the local fauna community and are pleased to have the public take part.

Headwaters Music & Arts is an independent non-profit multidisciplinary organization whose mission is to provide opportunities for creativity through instruction and to inspire community through music and the arts. For more information on the planting event contact Headwaters Music & Arts at 218.444.5606.

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Virtual Art with Diamond: Stick Weaving

Oh man, the leaves are popping outside! Since I made this video the leaves seemed to have more than doubled in size. My favorite reasons for heading into the woods is to either explore or to find a shady spot to do some art. This fun weaving activity involves both of those (though you should definitely feel free to bring the stick back inside to create your piece) 🙂

You will need:
• String, yarn, ribbon, paper or even grass.
• Scissors
• A “Y” shaped stick
• A pop sickle stick, butter knife, or something similar for tightening your weave

Fiber arts are one of my side passions though I am just a beginner. I find it is so comforting to make something out of yarn or string even if it isn’t perfect. So many of the objects in our our daily lives are woven – jeans, pillowcases, towels, etc. Getting creative with it is just the next logical step in my opinion 🙂 Though I only weave on sticks and cardboard many weavers use the skill to create lovely tapestries, rugs, shawls, etc. After you learn the basics of weaving you can pick up a loom and practice tapestry yourself! I hope you have fun and play around. If you feel comfortable sharing please drop a photo of your creation in the comments or email to diamond.knispel@headwatersmusicandarts.org.

Diamond Knispel
Art Teacher | Marketing & Arts Program Coordinator
Headwaters Music & Arts

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Virtual Art with Diamond: One Point Perspective

Perspective is a super important concept in art. When I teach perspective I often find that people are more nervous about the concept than they need to be. With the help of straight edge and a little patience + practice anyone can master perspective. This week’s video only touches on one point perspective – I think that we will dig into two point perspective in a later video 🙂

You will need:
• Paper
• Pencil or other drawing implement
• Possibly something to color with
• Possibly a straight edge

This project is meant to be fun and easy for all ages and abilities. It can be a good little brain teaser so practice it when you are a wide awake 🙂 Have fun and play around! And, of course, if you feel comfortable please share your creation in the comments or email to diamond.knispel@headwatersmusicandarts.org.

Diamond Knispel
Art Teacher | Marketing & Arts Program Coordinator
Headwaters Music & Arts

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Virtual Art with Diamond: Paper Patterns

This weeks video teaches a simple but fun technique for making lovely decorations. This video gives a few examples and ideas how to draw a shape and create a pattern to make a garland. The project can be adapted for creating stencils, paper puppets card decals, etc. I was inspired to make the paper garland in the video from seeing all the hearts hanging in everyone’s windows. I love making making paper snowflakes and other paper cutouts and I figured what a lovely addition to the colorful window displays folks are making for themselves/ neighbors/ strangers.

You will need:

• Paper
• Scissors
• Pencil or other drawing implement
• Possibly something to color with
• Possibly shapes to trace

Mothers day is this Sunday. I always made my own gifts during holidays, often using art class or other school projects to create the gifts. I know that it is probably harder for some kids to create those handmade gifts for the matrons in their life since they are not at school. Since this project only requires paper and scissors it is accessible and gives kids an opportunity to use their imagination to decorate their home environments for themselves and their family. Any paper can be used for this project and after the decorations come down they can be cut up for scrapbooks/ card/ mobiles/ fridge magnets/ etc.

Even though this week’s video is simple and aimed at a bit younger audience it is still for all ages. Cutting paper is pretty relaxing and turns out some awesome results. You can make the garlands as complex as you would like. In reality, paper cutting is actually a fine art form. Try Googling “paper cutouts as fine art” and look at all the phenomenal pieces 🙂 For now though I just encourage you to share your paper garlands with the world via your windows and then please send photos! If you you feel comfortable please share your creation in the comments or email to diamond.knispel@headwatersmusicandarts.org. Happy Mothers Day!

Diamond Knispel
Art Teacher | Marketing & Arts Program Coordinator
Headwaters Music & Arts

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Virtual Art with Diamond: Basic Pet Portraits

This video features my sweet kitty, Lady Gray, for two reasons: 1) this week I decided we should talk about pet portraits and 2) I wanted to raise awareness for Great River Rescue’s upcoming art contest.

Great River Rescue holds an art contest every year around this time to remind us humans about the importance of keeping our animal companions healthy. This years theme is SAVE THE DAY – NEUTER AND SPAY! The contest is for two dimensional art in any media done by children in K-12th grade. You can read more about this contest and find out how to take part here.

I figured now was as good a time as any to show you the basics of what a dog and a cat look like. In this video I show how to create a line drawing of a cat and a dog face and then also show how to draw eyeballs and noses. This lesson is for all ages and artistic abilities. It can be adapted and modified for young children as well as expanded upon for adults.

You will need:

• Paper
• Pencil
• Possibly a pencil sharpener
• And possibly your own sweet furry friend to help you out

Portraits are a wonderful way to preserve a likeness of a loved one for the rest of time. They have a personal touch that goes beyond a photograph. Practicing portraits is also a great way to get better at looking and really capturing what the world looks like. Seeing and recreating what you see is the first big step in becoming a skilled artist so encourage your young child to give it a try. It doesn’t have to be perfect or even “good.” It is all about practicing. I hope that after you watch this video you use the techniques to draw your own pet. Lady Gray and I would love to see what your furry friend looks like! Get creative with us! And then if you you feel comfortable please share your creation in the comments or email to diamond.knispel@headwatersmusicandarts.org.

P.s. Please create a piece for the art contest! I am one of the judges and looking at all of the submitted art is one of the highlights of my spring 🙂

Diamond Knispel
Art Teacher | Marketing & Arts Program Coordinator
Headwaters Music & Arts

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Virtual Art with Diamond: Paper Quilling

Paper Quilling is one of the more simple forms of sculpture. It only involves paper and adhesive and then the rest is up to your imagination. I love paper quilling because it is so low pressure, and I feel like even without much practice or know-how it tends to look awesome – unlike some other types of sculpture and fine art 🙂

You will need (I didn’t get this list exactly right in the video):

• Paper
• GLUE – liquid glue is preferably
• Possibly a pencil
• And possibly a ruler
• You might want a pen, toothpick, popsicle stick, or a sharp fingernail – whichever tool you like for bending.

Quilling is pretty old art form that started back when folks made a point of using EVERYTHING. Many old quilling pieces are made with scraps of paper leftover from bookmaking. I think this means you don't have to worry about getting fancy at all. During our collage video I told you about my years old box of paper scraps – that is what I dug into for this piece. Being that Earth Day was this past Wednesday it only seems fitting to challenge yourself to use some (if not all) paper scraps for this project. And also, if you don’t yet have your own paper scrap box you should start one. I call my box of paper/ribbon/cardboard scraps my treasure box because when it comes to creating scraps and found bits are truly like gold 🙂 Please – get creative with us! And then if you you feel comfortable please share your creation in the comments or email to diamond.knispel@headwatersmusicandarts.org.

Diamond Knispel
Art Teacher | Marketing & Arts Program Coordinator
Headwaters Music & Arts

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Virtual Art: Ball Point Pens & Zentangles

Right now is a lovely time to send some snail-mail to someone you love. The United States Postal service is still running and everyone loves receiving mail from loved ones - especially pretty mail. This week I invite you to make some pretty mail for a loved one using a ball point pen. There are some easy ways to use a ball point pen to make something beautiful, all it takes is time and patience.

You will need:

• Ball point pen
• Pencil
• Paper
• Any other fun tools you may want to use

I practiced a lot of my drawing skills by doodling in class and as a teen I got really good with a ball point pen. I found out I could do almost as much with the right pen as I could a pencil - except erase 🙂 With a few shading pointers you don't ever have to use a pencil sharpener again! As always - this activity is for all ages and artistic abilities. You will be pleasantly surprised to see how nice zentangle art turns out even if you don't consider yourself an artist. If there is any part you don't like just black it out with the pen or cut it out with scissors🙂 Get creative with us and then please share your creation in the comments or email to diamond.knispel@headwatersmusicandarts.org.

Diamond Knispel
Art Teacher | Marketing & Arts Program Coordinator
Headwaters Music & Arts

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Virtual Art with Diamond: How to Draw Plants

Drawing plants is a fun way to learn observational drawing skills. This weeks Virtual Art Session touches on observation, shadow vs. light, pencil technique, shading, and still life through the no-pressure form of a plant. The natural form of plants makes them perfect for a budding artist because there isn’t just one way to draw the shape – every angle make the shape appear different. Drawing a plant starts with drawing the leaves.

You will need:

• Pencil (or charcoal)
• Pencil sharpener
• Eraser
• Paper
• A plant or a photo of a plant

Drawing leaves is for everyone! Whether it be with a pencil, crayon, marker, or paintbrush you can join in by observing and drawing your own plant. As always, the goal of our Virtual Art sessions is to introduce a fun project for all ages and artistic abilities. You don’t have to be able to draw a straight line – a curve will do just fine 🙂 Get creative with us and then please share your creation in the comments or email to diamond.knispel@headwatersmusicandarts.org.

Diamond Knispel
Art Teacher | Marketing & Arts Program Coordinator
Headwaters Music & Arts