Creative Classes

This 1-day workshop will focus on sound as a healing force through cross-cultural perspectives. Students will learn about meditation and sound bathing with the use of various musical instruments. Breathing techniques and body movements for healing will also be explored. Students will investigate how sound can be used in everyday life to release stress and to calm the body and mind.

In this 4-week class, students will explore how patterns function within two-dimensional artworks and how they can be combined to form cohesive compositions. The class is grounded in direct observation and study of pattern-rich and compositionally compelling works from the Denver Art Museum’s collections and exhibitions.

Students will learn analytical methods for examining repetitions, structural organization, compositional movement, combination of patterns, and deliberate color relationships. Through focused gallery-based sketch studies using colored pencils and notebooks, students will practice schematizing and simplifying complex artworks into clear visual systems. Through this process, they will develop a technical approach to seeing, enabling students to abstract compositions, identify dominant shapes and rhythmic structures, and better understand visual decision-making of the artist.

Studio work extends this analytical inquiry into practice. Students will create painted pattern papers that are cut, reorganized, and assembled into new compositions. This class emphasizes composition as both a perceptual and generative tool, fostering visual literacy, structural clarity, and experimental exploration through painting, drawing, and pattern-making techniques.

This 4-week class combines art history and experimentation to explore the emerging movement of Bio Art. Rooted in environmental concerns and science; Bio Art can range from working with natural materials to manipulating DNA. Students will be introduced to “Agar Art” which involves cultivating bacteria, work with foraged and harvested materials from nature, and will be encouraged to explore mediums through a conceptual and research-based lens. Students will discover new ways to look at art and will study Bio Artworks represented in the Denver Art Museum’s collection by artists Ernesto Neto, Karen Kitchel, and others.