Jude Kamel-Frank was a smidge apprehensive when she signed up for the class, “Art Start: Who Let the Dogs Out? Paint a Portrait of your Pet” at the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG). A hobby artist and frequenter of the MAG, Kamel-Frank had never been to a creative workshop before.
“I was a little nervous coming here because I was thinking like, oh my god, I’m gonna look like a five-year-[old] drawing compared to everyone else,’” Kamel-Frank said.
Still, Kamel-Frank enjoyed herself. They praised the instructor, Joan Nichols, for her work engaging the class and her helpful advice for Kamel-Frank’s portrait of their cat, Jiji (named after the cat in “Kiki’s Delivery Service”).
Getting to talk about pets was a plus too. “I love that the commonality of it all is just a pet, which most of the time brings happiness, even if you don’t know this person,” they said.
Nichols has been a creative workshop painting instructor at the MAG for about two years, but she attended workshops as a student with her children back in the 2000s. Between kickstarting hearty pet conversation and playing classic tunes like “Hey Jude,” she even had the class warm up with chair yoga — not surprising, considering Nichols used to have her own yoga studio.
Nichols explained that incorporating yoga, in some manner, into her classes helps to separate time for making art from the rest of the day. This is important to her, especially when she’s teaching Art Starts classes, which are one-session, low-commitment classes that are only a few hours long.
The class had two projects: first, the “Mangy Mutt,” a loose, scribbly sketch of a pet. Second, the actual portrait of the pet. In contrast to what one might expect, Nichols wasn’t walking her students through the process. She set out photos of her pets, boxes of material to make collages with, and tubs of paint brushes and acrylic markers. Her students were free to make their portrait however they wanted.
“I mean, sure, I could create a class that says, ‘Okay, we’re gonna lay down a stroke vertically’ […] Now, we’re gonna mix this color and we’re gonna do it horizontally.’ But that doesn’t allow a person to really self-express,” Nichols said.
Beyond reaping the artistic benefits of going to a class like this, Kamel-Frank cited meeting people who share similar interests as added benefits. They said, “Museums and galleries […] always have been, at least for me, a safe space.”
