Art Classes in Richmond, VA for Spring and Summer

I'll be offering many, many, many classes in the following months.  Here's a list of them in case you're interested.  All classes take place in Richmond, VA.  You can email me at SusanSingerArt at msn.com if you'd like more information, or take a look at my website at www.susansinger.com  for details about the classes.
 

Drawing
Beginning Drawing - Mondays, April 8 - May 20, 7 weeks, $210, at Crossroads Art Center, contact me to sign up.  Most likely I'll offer another Beginning Drawing class in the summer, but the dates haven't been set yet.  Contact me if you're interested.

Intermediate Drawing - Tuesdays, April 2 - May 28, 8 weeks (no class 4/9), $240, at my studio.  Open to all who have had Beginning Drawing or commensurate experience, contact me to sign up;  most likely I'll offer another Intermediate class in the summer, but I haven't set the dates yet.  Contact me if you're interested.
Drawing Fundamentals Intensive - another new class for me - Beginning Drawing all in a week!  Monday, June 17 - Friday, June 21; 9:30 - 12:30; at the Visual Arts Center, sign up at www.visarts.org


Zendoodles
Zendoodles for Parent and Child - a new class, by special request - Zendoodles with a special emphasis on kids and their parents.  We'll do some special projects for them to work together as well as teach many of the wonderful, fun patterns which make Zendoodles so special!  Saturday, May 18, 10-2; $75 for parent and child together; at my studio; bring a lunch; contact me to sign up. 
Zendoodles - the regular class for adults (and kids accompanied by an adult), Saturday, August 3, 10-2; at the Visual Arts Center, sign up at www.visarts.org

Pastels
Intro to Pastels - Wednesdays, June 5 - July 10, 6 weeks, 6:30 - 9 PM, at the Visual Arts Center, sign up at www.visarts.org
Intermediate Pastels - ongoing, Monday afternoons from 1-3:30 at my studio, $30/session.  Minimum 3 students/class; Max 6.  Call ahead to register. OR Wednesdays, July 24 - August 28, 6 weeks, 6:30 - 9 PM, at the Visual Arts Center, sign up at www.visarts.org
Pastel Intensive- Friday, April 5 6:30 - 9; Saturday, April 6, 10-4; Sunday, April 7, 1-4.  At Visual Arts Center and en plein aire (probably at the river); a chance to spend the weekend doing art!  Sign up at www.visarts.org
 

Creativity
 Take a Visual Journal to Your Soul - We'll spend a weekend making an extraordinary 64 page bound journal, then will meet 6 Thursdays to fill the journal with art, musings, dreams, thoughts - whatever you'd like.  Classes will offer opportunity to learn art skills; explore personally and spiritually; play, etc.  Saturday, April 13, 10-4; Sunday, April 14, 1-5; Thursdays April 18 - May 30 (no class April 25 - I'll be at Tech Rehearsal for the Vagina Monologues!); $275 + $25 for materials; at my studio; contact me to sign up
Follow Your Bliss - a class designed to help you learn what it is you LOVE to do, to figure out what might be stopping you from doing it, to support you in doing it with vitality and joy, Mondays, July 8 - August 26, 8 weeks, 6:30 - 9 PM, at the Visual Arts Center, sign up at www.visarts.org

 
Watercolor
 Watercolor Painting in the Garden - class held at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden; sign up at www.visarts.orgTuesday, April 9, 10-4 OR
Saturday, April 20, 10-4 OR
Monday, June 10, 10-4, OR
Saturday, July 27, 10-4

Life in the First Person: women's Stories Uncovered

Life in the First Person: Women’s Stories Uncovered

 

A novelist. A storyteller. A poet. A freelance writer. A performance artist. A creative nonfiction writer. A blogger.

What do they all have in common?

The first person.

Their experiences and their points of view are different, but their pronouns are the same.

Find out what comes after “I.”

Come out to hear life in the first person with Gigi Amateau, novelist; Denise Bennett, storyteller; Tarfia Faizullah, poet; Julie Geen, freelance writer; Shelia Gray, performance artist; Valley Haggard, creative nonfiction writer and Alex Iwashyna, blogger.

Life in the First Person: Women’s Stories Uncovered will serve as the grand finale in the event series, Beyond Barbie: Piecing Together Today's Woman running in conjunction with Susan Singer’s art opening, “Not Barbie: A Celebration of Real Women,”  on Thursday, November 3, at 7 PM at Crossroads Art Center. Tickets can be purchased online at www.SusanSinger.com or through  Crossroads Art Center or at the door.   

Featuring:

Gigi Amateau is the author of the young adult novel, A Certain Strain of Peculiar, a 2010 Bank Street College Best Children’s Books of the Year. She also wrote Chancey of the Maury River, a William Allen White Masters List title for grades 3-5. Her debut novel, Claiming Georgia Tate was selected as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age.  She recently completed 200-hour yoga teacher training. Visit www.gigiamateau.com.

Denise Bennett tells personal stories, her original versions of traditional stories and sacred stories often interlaced with harp and vocal music.  She is a member of the Tell Tale Hearts Storytellers Theater in Richmond. Master storyteller Elizabeth Ellis has said of her, “Denise Bennett is a storyteller and a musician of exceptional talent. Her work is timeless, and flawless. Her work reminds us of the love that dwells in the deep heart's core.” Visit her at www.storiesbydenise.com.

Tarfia Faizullah is a graduate of VCU's creative writing program, and the former associate editor of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Crab Orchard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Diode, Bellingham Review and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Project award, the Ploughshares Cohen Award and a Fulbright scholarship.

Julie Geen writes a monthly column for belle magazine and is a contributor to Style Weekly. She has published essays in anthologies, most recently “Tarnished: True Tales of Innocence Lost.” Along with raising children, dealing with pets and her own mind, she teaches creative writing classes through Hanover Parks and Recreation. Currently, she is turning one of her screenplays into a novel, and from there probably into a face book post. She blogs at juliegeen.com.
 

Shelia Gray is a graduate of the VCU Crafts Department, focusing in metal smithing, textiles and glass. She is currently involved in creating wearable art and costumes, as well as performance art and body painting for fashion shows, events and special projects. She’s writing a mixed-media graphic novel which incorporates sculptures and performance pieces. A self-employed gardener, she has winters off to do what ever she likes. 

Valley Haggard, the executive director of Richmond Young Writers, teaches creative writing to kids at Chop Suey Books and creative nonfiction to adults at Chop Suey, Black Swan Bookstore and the Visual Arts Center. On the board of the James River Writers, she has written for Style Weekly, Belle, Rhome, V Magazine and Skirt and has published chapters of her memoir in The Writer’s Dojo and Tarnished: True Tales of Innocence Lost. Visit her at www.richmondyoungwriters.com or www.valleyhaggard.com.

Alex Iwashyna went from a B.A. in Philosophy to an M.D. to a SAHM (stay at home mom), writer and poet before thirty. She spends most of her time on LateEnough.com blogging about life, parenting, marriage, culture and her inability to wake up in the morning and not hate everyone. She also writes for Richmondmom.com, teaches at the Visual Arts Center and manages enough freelance work to guarantee sexy circles under her eyes.

The Blues: Liberation, Empowerment and Joy!

The Blues: Liberation, Empowerment and Joy! is the third in the series of seven evening performances in conjunction with Susan Singer’s exhibition of female nudes, Not Barbie: A Celebration of Real Women.  The series, Beyond Barbie: Piecing Together Today’s Woman, showcases and highlights the joys as well as the hardships that women face today.

The Blues: Liberation, Empowerment, and Joy! is an evening celebrating the life-changing power of music. Opening the evening with song will be Ana Rivera-Poland followed by a headlining performance from GayeAdegbalola, singer, composer, storyteller and activist.  Gaye has toured nationally and internationally, and has won numerous awards including the prestigious Blues Music Award (formerly the W.C. Handy Award – the Grammy of the blues industry). As of February 2009, Adegbalola has 13 CDs in national distribution, including 3 on her own label, Hot Toddy Music. Gaye composes, sings and plays acoustic guitar, slide guitar, and harmonica. By maintaining the blues legacy, Gaye sees herself as a contemporary griot - keeping the history alive, delivering messages of empowerment, ministering to the heartbroken, and finding joy in the mundane.  

The evening will go beyond the frequently heard sadness the Blues offers, to find the true joy and empowerment that comes from liberating one’s self.  As Gaye mentions in her hit song Big Ovaries Baby, “Assertive or aggressive/Name it what you will/Brazen or bodacious I got/Ovaries of steel.”

The Blues: Liberation, Empowerment and Joy! will take place October 6^th from 7-9 PM at Crossroads Art Center at 2016 Staples Mill Rd, RVA 23230.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please go to www.crossroadsartcenter.com or www.susansinger.com or call Crossroads at 804-278-8950. 

Strength in Motion: Dancing our Sacred Bodies, Sept 22 at Crossroads Art Center

STRENGTH IN MOTION:  DANCING OUR SACRED BODIES

A bellydancer playing a violin?

A 92-year-old woman strutting her stuff?

Passion, anger, hurt, anguish, joy, bliss, love, hope, longing…

Spoken word, hooping, improv, combat style dancing….




Strength in Motion:  Dancing Our Sacred Bodies is an inspiring evening of dance presented by nine talented local women, ranging in age from 23 to 92. From the ancient arts of bellydance and circle dance, to modern hoop dance, Balla Guerra, and improvisation, these real women explore a wide variety of ways women dance their sacred bodies. 

Dance diva Frances Wessells, 92, offers her unique approach to improv, and everyone will want to get up and MOVE!  Photographer Heather Addley’s fusion bellydance tells the story of overcoming stage fright caused by a speech impediment.  Hoopers Natalie Gianninoto and Rachel Braford spin into their bliss in a piece that represents the struggle between darkness and light. Spoken word and dance are combined in writer Dawn Flores’ powerful piece. Professional bellydance performer and instructor Khalima is poetry in motion as she presents “World Priestess.”  Social services professional Tina Batya plays the violin while performing Balla Guera in a dance that helped her heal from tumor surgery. Young mother Lelya Nissa shares the intense emotions of her life through dance. And grandmother Peggy O’Neill brings us all together in a circle to follow in the ancient steps of our ancestors. 


Strength in Motion:  Dancing Our Sacred Bodies is the first of the series of seven evening performances in conjunction with Susan Singer’s exhibition of female nudes, Not Barbie: A Celebration of Real Women which opens at Crossroads at 6 PM Friday, Sept 16.  The series, Beyond Barbie: Piecing Together Today’s Woman, showcases and highlights the joys as well as the hardships that real women face today.

It will take place Thursday, September 22 from 7-9 PM at Crossroads Art Center at 2016 Staples Mill Rd, RVA 23230.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please go to www.crossroadsartcenter.com or www.susansinger.com or call Crossroads at 804-278-8950.  For more information about the evening program, contact oneill.peggy4@gmail.com.