Get Crafty: Hart House Art Sessions

Last Thursday I attended one of Hart House's virtual Get Crafty Sessions! Here’s my review:

First we were shown a little presentation about artists who used materials that can be found at home to make their art. This workshop (and Get Crafty sessions in general) emphasize the ability to make art from materials that are already available to people. The only thing I needed for this workshop was one piece of printer paper and a marker. 

On our pieces of paper we were asked to draw a few things:

1. A line that went across the page horizontally (but it didn’t need to be straight).
2. A line to map from where we were sitting in the house to the front door.
3. What we thought our brains looked like when we did school work.
4. What we thought our brains looked like when we listened to music.
5. What we thought our brains looked like when we dreamed.  

Here’s what my roommate and I drew:

Every time we drew something new, everyone (about 25 zoom attendees) would hold their drawing up close to their cameras and the host would take a screenshot. The art itself was the patterns all our drawings made in the Zoom window! 

We tried other exercises like this too: We cut holes in the paper and shined lights through them, we folded the paper, and crumpled it too. We also held up book covers and other objects that were available to us to make colourful patterns on the screen. Here’s what the end result looked like for the folded paper exercise: 

Overall, this was a super fun and chill workshop. It lasted about an hour, and it was the most fun I’ve had on Zoom in a while. Now that we are always cooped inside these days, it’s easy to forget how enjoyable making art can be when it’s done in a group environment. This was a nice reminder that there’s other people out in the world searching for opportunities to get creative too. 

If you're interested in attending, Hart House hosts virtual Get Crafty sessions every Thursday at 11:00 am. You can find the schedule for this year here: https://harthouse.ca/events/get-crafty. And to get the Zoom link for a specific workshop you need to DM them on their Instagram.

Happy crafting everyone!