Mentor Artist: Julia James or Tajali Littman

Grades: K-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students will learn the elements of bookmaking from binding to illustrating. Projects could include hand-made paper, drawing, printmaking, pop-up books, lift-the-flap books, baggie books, accordion books with CD case covers and classroom collaborative books.

Mentor Artist: Ruben Guzman or Ernesto Olmos

Grades: 5-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Mexican cartonería is the creation of painted sculptures from recycled paper or cardboard in a manner similar to papier mâché. This popular Mexican art form combines Spanish art techniques with indigenous motifs and themes and is deeply rooted in ancient traditions and legends from Mexico. Students will learn the basics of sculpture and form as well as elements of traditional design and technique. 

Mentor Artist: Mark Edwards

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students explore the world of cartooning by learning the basics of drawing, portraiture and storyboarding.  Projects can include comic strips, books, portraits (self or other), and creation of characters.  Students enthusiasm for writing stories and creating characters through cartooning provides a jumping off point for language arts learning.

Mentor Artist: Tajali Littman or Nadine Gay

Grades: 1-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions

Cost: This class is highly customized.  Please contact AIS staff for pricing. 

Students appreciate and learn from the tactile experience of working with clay.  Students develop fine motor skills while learning basic hand-building techniques including pinch, coil and slab methods. Projects with clay could include development of basic technique through several small projects or a longer-term project including drawing a design, contemplation of symbolism, measuring for components, making the parts and assembling the final result.

Mentor Artist: Tajali Littman, Evan Bissell, Katy Bernheim, Nadine Gay, Marty Meade, Roni Hoffman Duncan or Ginny Wilson

Grades: K-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students will practice skills of choosing, cutting and pasting a variety of materials in this introduction to mixed-media collage and assemblage.  They will also explore torn paper techniques and found-object collage and/or assemblage.  Projects could involve non-paper collage and an exploration of various cultures’ collage traditions. Projects can link to academic themes, such as the rain forest or ocean, deepening the student’s understanding and enthusiasm.

Mentor Artist: Katy Bernheim, Julia James, Evan Bissell, Tajali Littman, Shelie McCall, Mark Edwards or Roni Hoffman Duncan

Grades:  K-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students will enhance drawing skills by following guided practices in learning to see accurately, proportion, depth, shadow and composition.  Students will learn how to draw using basic shapes as fundamental building blocks, utilizing guidelines and reference points.  Students will investigate techniques for various drawing media, such as watercolor pencil, pastel, crayon and colored ink.  Students will explore how to communicate stories through the creation of their artwork (i.e., facial and body expressions).

Mentor Artist: Rebecca Burgess

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Focusing on the ancient arts of natural dying, weaving, papermaking, and natural building, students design and plant their own native plant dye gardens, creating art mediums in perpetuity. Students can create habitats for native birds, restoring hydrology patterns, and creating carbon sinks. This work gives children the ability to learn how to grow their own art mediums, while supporting the ecosystem.

Mentor Artist: Marty Meade

Grades: 5-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions

Cost: This class is highly customized.  Please contact AIS staff for pricing. 

This is a rare opportunity for students to create beautiful works of art from glass.  Students learn to create Fused Glass art, designing, cutting and assembling glass pieces with other decorative materials, creating individual plates, jewelry and other fine art. On-going, process-oriented projects will enable students to explore a wide range of warm glass applications as well as pre and post firing techniques using a variety of studio tools. Safety, process, design, texture, color and functionality will be emphasized. Basic tools and supplies are included.

Mentor Artist: Nadine Gay

Grades: K-12

Duration: 10 or more sessions

Cost: This class is highly customized.  Please contact AIS staff for pricing. 

Creating a Glass Tile Mural is a collaborative project, which can be created by a classroom, grade level or entire school, working together.  Students learn basic art skills in order to create images around their chosen theme.  Once students have created their artwork, they learn the process of creating glass tiles that are pieced together and mounted as part of the final mural.

Mentor Artist: Christine Elder

Grades: 6-8

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students learn about the history of illuminated manuscripts and the methods and materials for producing unique and beautiful documents like those created before the invention of the printing press. Student view and compare historic manuscript pages and discuss how ancient scribes effectively used the principles of design and elements of art. Students used mixed media skills—ink pen calligraphy, gold leaf application and water-based paint— to create a artwork inspired by these designs and materials.  Each student will create a unique design based on their monogram, using calligraphic letters gilded with gold leaf and illuminated with a painted design. Complexity will vary with grade level and total number of sessions. This course is directly linked to California seventh grade History-Social Science standards (Medieval and Renaissance Europe).

Mentor Artist:   Katy Bernheim, Asual Aswad, Zoe Harris, Ernesto Olmos  
or Frank Gonzalez

Grades: K-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

This class focuses on the ancient art of mask-making.  Students will focus on one or two specific types of masks working with materials such as plaster, paper, paper maché, clay, recycled or found materials. The projects can be related to a traditional form of mask from a specific culture or a creative, modern creation. 

Arts Learning Link: Youth in Arts Presents: Michael Cooper, Masked Marvels and Wondertales, October 14, 2008

Mentor Artist: Katy Bernheim, Tajali Littman, Nadine Gay or Julia James

Grades: K-8

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Children will learn new skills and creatively express themselves as they work in a variety of forms including: painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking and mixed media.  Children will explore basic art fundamentals such as line, shape, color and texture.  Course theme can be aligned with academic curriculum (i.e. an ocean theme could include creating animals of the sea, painting seascapes, making sponge prints and creating a 3-D ocean diorama). 

Mentor Artist: Marty Meade, Nadine Gay or Tajali Littman

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students explore how to transform geometric shapes into intricate patterns using various textured surfaces of stone, glass, tile, shells, and other found objects. Students develop their own design, transfer it to plywood, and learn a variety of mosaic techniques including glass cutting, classic mosaic laying, and grouting.  Older students explore Pique Assiette (“stolen plate”) mosaics made from broken plates, china, and ceramics. Students learn how to safely and precisely cut a plate, bowl, figurine, cup, etc., and then design a mosaic mirror and art panel.

Mentor Artist: Nadine Gay, Evan Bissell or Frank Gonzalez

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 8 or more sessions

Cost: This class is highly customized.  Please contact AIS staff for pricing. 

Children explore the basics of drawing, collage and assemblage, as well as the important skill of artistic collaboration. Mural creation evolves through a process of individual work, small group compositions, evaluation of the collective body of drawings and, finally, the design and creation of a mural on a wall selected with school site leaders.

Mentor Artist: Julia James, Tajali Littman or Nadine Gay

Grades: K-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

By layering cut paper designs, students explore concepts of symmetry, asymmetry, abstraction, patterns and negative vs. positive space. Students look at cut paper art from the past—sometimes used to create stencils for patterns on textiles—and discover contemporary artists using cut paper techniques. Students create their own cut paper stencils, which will become beautiful layered paintings. Students can then use the resulting artwork to create mixed-media projects such as frames, sculptures, collages, and bound books. A possible option is for students to create handmade papers using recycled scraps and inclusions of their own choosing (i.e. twigs, dried flowers, fabric and string).

Mentor Artist:  Julia James, Evan Bissell, Tajali Littman, Mark Edwards, Marty Meade, Roni Hoffman Duncan, Ginny Wilson or Katy Bernheim

Grades: PreK-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students explore the world of painting, experimenting with a variety of media including water-color, tempera and acrylic. This course focuses on learning specific techniques such as color-mixing, creating shades and tints, composition and perspective. Students may receive an introduction into various painting styles (i.e. impressionistic, abstract, realistic).  Students may create a final painting beginning with the inception of the idea and proceeding through sequential planning and selection of techniques and media through the completion of the work.

Mentor Artist: Katy Bernheim or Julia James

Grades: K-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students view various styles of famous portraiture and learn how to draw their own image, experimenting with proportion and composition while studying the basic elements of portraiture art. Students will use pastels, watercolors, tempera, and mixed media to produce portraits that are full of life! Projects may include a framed portrait, comic book or illustrated storybook.

Mentor Artist: Asual Aswad, Katy Bernheim or Julia James

Grades: PreK-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students are introduced to the ancient art-form of printmaking without a press.  Students learn stamping and rubbing techniques, mono printing, relief techniques (foamplate), stenciling techniques, and how to transfer an image from a drawing to the printing block, experimenting with a variety of different papers and ink combinations.  Students create their own unique image, learn to tell stories through a sequence of images and use stamps to create a variety of printed artworks such as pillows, lanterns, sculptures, collages, and bound books.

Mentor Artist: Frank Gonzalez

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students discover that they can create a puppet out of ordinary found and recycled materials such as paper bags, socks, manila envelopes and boxes.  Students design and assemble puppets, then learn to animate them.  Students can make individual hand puppets, marionettes, or larger collaborative mechanical puppets, learning to develop characters and maneuver the puppets as a tem.  The puppets can be used towards a performance, school play or for community display. 

Arts Learning Links:  Youth in Arts Presents: The Reluctant Dragon by Tears of Joy Puppet Theater, January 15, 2009

Youth in Arts Presents: Butterflies by Hudson Vagabond Puppets, March 12, 2009

Mentor Artist: Christine Elder

Grades: 3-8

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students learn about the career possibilities in the field of scientific illustration then practice the skill of creating accurate drawings and paintings of living organisms. Students observe and record the structures of organisms, learning observational drawing skills, including depicting shape, form and texture; as well as watercolor painting skills, with a focus on mixing colors to match realistic hues found in nature. Themes can be aligned with science curriculum subjects, such as the biology and anatomy of plants, insects, birds, mammals, etc.

Mentor Artist:  Lise Ouse Hicks, Asual Aswad, Tajali Littman, Nadine Gay,  
Roni Hoffman Duncan

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students will explore height, width, and depth while discovering new ways to use sculptural materials and techniques. Students will use found objects to create fun and useful sculptures.  Materials can include plaster, air-dry clay including wood, wire, old toys and costume jewelry. Thumbnail drawing, brainstorming, painting, decorating techniques, and group collaboration skills will be developed in this class.  Students can create individual or collaborative sculpture projects.

Mentor Artist: Genna Panzarella or Evan Bissell

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students learn about the unique art of Italian Street Painting, Youth in Arts’ specality!  Students learn basic composition, framing, color and technique as they begin with pastels on paper.  They learn from a master madonnari (street painter) how to transfer their image onto the street through gridding and stenciling.  Students then learn how to blend, shape and contour images.  Curriculum connections to math (gridding) and European history. 

Arts Learning Link: Italian Street Painting Festival Student Artist Program

Mentor Artist: Tajali Littman

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Stepping out of the classroom into nature, students will gather natural materials to be used in the creating of unique one of a kind weavings. Students will learn how to create primitive looms from simple available materials. Projects will include wall reliefs, placemats, and small wearable objects.  Great social studies connections.

Mentor Artist: Zoe Harris, Katy Bernheim, Ernesto Olmos or Ruben Guzman

Grades: 3-12

Duration: 6 or more sessions 

Students learn about traditional art forms from a variety of cultures and countries.  The course will focus on three to four forms from different cultures with emphasis on process. Students use traditional media such as charcoal, pen and ink, paint and block printing, as well as collage, paper maché and other mixed media techniques to explore their interpretations of each culture’s arts. Possible projects include Western and non-Western art, like African masks or rangoli designs from India, mask-making, weaving, Huichol yarn painting, Mexican cartoneria and Adrinka printmaking.