New lineup of art classes offered at Oxygen

Local artists offer courses in their medium — from painting to singing and greative writing.

Oxygen Art Centre is pleased to announce the latest line up of courses and workshops for the Winter/Spring 2014 semester of Continuing Arts Education.   There are quite a few new workshops this semester, as well as the return of some very popular courses.

January kicks off with offerings from the fabulous Bessie Wapp. She’ll lead Balkan Choir, with ancient multi-part Eastern European acapella songs of love and lust, harvest and hearth, wartime, badly arranged marriages, drunken husbands, and more.

Wapp will also be teaching the ever-popular and much loved Singing the Blues, where students learn a new blues song each week, and explore the rich swamp of the human voice in a relaxed and supportive environment. The last class will offer an opportunity to sing with a live band for invited guests.

February heralds new workshops from Natasha Smith including Fine Art Shadow Boxes (after Joseph Cornell) and Be Creative!

Erica Konrad will be offering her very popular Encaustic Basics: Painting with Beeswax course in both February and March. Those who have already taken Konrad’s course before will be eligible to sign up for her new Encaustic and Stencils workshop, as well as the next level workshop, Intermediate Encaustic Painting.

March and April bring two new writing courses: Writing What We Love with Susan Andrews Grace and Creative Writing for Performance and Spoken Word with Magpie Ulysses.

Deborah Thompson will also offer two new courses in April: Painting: Modernist Manifestos and Following a Line: Figure Drawing and Painting.

Then Natasha Smith is back for the final workshop of the semester: Collage Painting.

For more information on Oxygen’s courses, including dates, fees and instructor biographies, see oxygenartcentre.org or call 250-352-2821.

Nelson Star