Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed jazz and classical musician as well as a leading advocate of American culture.

From the biography on his website, www.wyntonmarsalis.org, “Marsalis’ core beliefs and foundation for living are based on the principals of jazz. He promotes individual creativity (improvisation), collective cooperation (swing), gratitude and good manners (sophistication), and faces adversity with persistent optimism (the blues). With his evolved humanity and through his selfless work, Marsalis has elevated the quality of human engagement for individuals, social networks and cultural institutions throughout the world.”

Let’s all put on some Wynton Marsalis and get colorin’!

Our teacher Maria Cruz has created another coloring page featuring Nelson Mandela–a social rights activist, politician and philanthropist. Please watch this short informative video about his life and print out our coloring page.

If you would like to turn in your completed coloring page to the bin in front of the studio, we will be hanging them in our windows for all to see!

Parents: You can take action and express support for the black community by educating your children about race and racial history in our country. It is imperative that we expose our children to black culture in everyday ways to slow the cycle of passive racism that exists in our communities. 

A compelling way to teach children about black culture and history is through art. One of our fantastic teachers and artists, Maria Cruz, has created some beautiful coloring sheets for us that feature black art and culture. Our first coloring sheet features The Maya Angelou poem ‘Still I Rise’, which aims to be an anthem of hope amidst the struggle to overcome prejudice. Please use this coloring sheet as a starting point in your conversation with your kids about race and the history of racial inequality in our country. We will continue to create new sheets weekly. 

Starting Wednesday, we will have a bin out front of the studio for parents to drop off coloring sheets completed by their children. We will be hanging them in our studio window for all to see. Please join us in creating these beautiful images and sending a message of support to the black community. 

In the area around the Maya Angelou image, we ask that you personalize your picture. Maria suggests that you look up African Adinkra symbols and draw the ones you feel connected to in the blank part of the picture. These symbols have strong meanings and are another great educational tool for your children.

Thank you Maria for providing this beautiful art for us. #blacklivesmatter

Ever thought about making a mini piñata? It can be made out of old cereal or snack boxes and can be filled with fun treasures! We should all be having mini piñata parties at home, I think.

This awesome ‘how-to’ video by our teacher Maria Cruz shows you step-by-step instruction on how to make a sugar skull piñata. But of course, your piñata can be anything you’d like it to be! Unicorns, pandas, mermaids, sloths? Just follow along and you’ll have an amazing piñata in no time!

Materials:

Scissors, Glue Stick, Chipboard (cereal/snack box/cardboard), Masking Tape, Tissue Paper or Crepe Paper (various colors), Pencil, Ruler

We’ve added a mini cupcake to our miniature collection and made a tutorial so you can too. It’s ridiculously cute.

Here’s the printable pattern:

First, cut your pieces. Then, create a jagged zig zag line at the top of your cupcake wrapper.

Next embroider a bunch of parallel lines to create the pleated look of the cupcake wrapper. You can jump from line to line as long as you only do so on the inside of the wrapper so you have clean lines on the outside. Then, fold it right sides together and sew the open side shut, like so:

Next, sew the bottom circle into the bottom of the wrapper while it’s still inside out. Then, flip it around and your cupcake wrapper is complete!

Now it’s time to sew the cupcake top. Start with two triangles, right side them together and sew one side shut. Then, open them up and add in the next pice, sewing them in one by one, always right sides together.

Continue until you’ve gotten all the way around and sewn the last piece shut to the pice you began with.

Next, we want to make some small tucks around the sides of the cupcake top so that it will fit into the cupcake wrapper. On each seam, make a very small fold and stitch it in place. Don’t over fold, because we want it to fit on top of the wrapper nicely.

Now we get to put the cupcake into the wrapper! Place it just inside the top of the wrapper and pin it in place. Then, sew around using a running stitch, leaving a small opening for the stuffing.

Once it’s stuffed, close the hole.

Now, twist the top of the cupcake until you have a nice swirl and it has more of a point at the top and stitch it in place.

Apparently it already looks super delicious!

Next step is to make a swirl around the top of the cupcake with some sparkly hot glue and add some gems, seed beads, or anything you have that will look like sprinkles. We made small felt cut outs for ours because that’s what we had!

If you want to add a little face like we did, go ahead and cut out a mouth, glue on some googly eyes, and voila! Cutest mini cupcake ever?!

As always, let us see all your mini everything! Thanks for following along!

A radial design is based on a circle, with a balanced design extending from the circle’s center. Our teacher Maria Cruz made this video with easy to follow step-by-step directions oh how to create your own at home. There are so many different options and designs to explore with this project, so make sure to try a few different patterns out and have fun!

Materials:

A plate, pencil, paper, vellum tracing paper, scissors, eraser, tape, and either colored pencils, watercolor, or markers.

Hope you all enjoy this tutorial, and make sure to share what you create!

We wanna start out with a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who took part in our grab bags over the past 8 weeks. It’s been a lot of fun to see everyone staying creative at home and turning to the arts while we navigate through these strange times. It’s become more clear now than ever how important the arts are!

These last bags turned out amazing! Absolutely love how everyone used their shells in so many different ways and especially love all of the wooden peg mermaids (and the scuba divers too)! There’s some really magical stuff going on. Let’s check them all out!

Bria:

Cat:

Emmy:

Julia:

Maddie:

Sloane:

WOW! You guys. This show turned out better than any of us could have imagined! We had 18 entries! A HUGE thank you to everyone who participated in this incredible tiny show. Check out all of the photos and videos of her private showing, and stay tuned for info on where to view the collection in person shortly. Siggy was so pleased with all of the fantastic bearded dragon renditions of famous works as well as the contemporary pieces that she inspired. What a treat! Hope you all enjoy this as much as we did!

Siggy even had some friends come out for the show!

Please enjoy this video of her private viewing of the opening:

And, of course, some up close shots of all the incredible pieces.

This miniature gallery grab bag was inspired by @tinyartshow on instagram and you guys really delivered! I love the themes that came with the collection of work–ocean theme, nature theme, and some seriously colorful pop art vibes! Great job all around, really.

We have one more week of grab bags coming up! Thank you to all who have been participating and keeping the creativity going at home! Now, let’s see those art shows.

Cat

Julia

You don’t wanna miss out on the puppy eating the art off of the wall at the end, folks.

Sloane