From our permanent collection, "The Love Letter" by Luigi Gregori

Love is in the air and on the walls of our galleries at SBMA!  We’d like to share that love with you today on our blog with some of our loveliest works and to remind you that a date at SBMA is a sure way to add romance to that special relationship in your life! To LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR VALENTINE ART, CLICK HERE.

Family Day artists at work!

We’re willing to bet that for the families who attended our Family Day last Sunday, the big football game on t.v. that night was pretty anti-climatic.  How could anything be more exciting than disguising yourself as a dinosaur or digging for dinosaur bones?

You’ll see for yourself in this slideshow of our little guests in action that we had a great turnout and that fun was anything but extinct in our studio.

If you missed Family Day this time, have no fear.  We’ll do another one on Sunday, March 4 from 1-3 pm.  You can also still learn how to make our dinosaur masks and try them at home.  Just CLICK HERE to LEARN MORE about our DINOSAUR MASK PROJECT.

KT and The Second ComingImage credits: detail, KT and the Second Coming, mixed media, 70”x60”x36” 2010

Our adult audiences might spend a few minutes gazing upon this piece, questioning the meaning of humanity and its place in the universe, but we are pretty sure we know what our younger visitors see: DINOSAURS.

So this weekend, as we prepare to host our Family Day event, we are not going to overthink it.  We’re going to  leave the “meaning of humanity” to the grown-ups and take on Adrian Hatfield through the eyes of a child—by making dinosaur art.  Come by and bring the family as our veteran youth instructor, Miss Candie, leads a project of prehistoric proportions.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR DINOSAUR FAMILY DAY EVENT CLICK HERE.

Kind of a mess.  But the truth is, it’s the first sign it’s time for one of our favorite exhibits: Scholastics.

The artwork you see strewn about the gallery is actually a collection of hundreds of pieces of art that have been submitted by our region’s 7th-12th graders for this years Scholastics Art Awards competition.  Jurors for the program were here all day last Saturday to judge the work which covers a wide array of media—ceramics and pottery, photography, jewelry, and painting to name a few, and in the coming days the Warner Gallery will be transformed into a breathtaking exhibit of creativity and energy, revealed at our “Meet Me in the Gallery” event on Friday, February 3.

Be sure to come out next Friday for this amazing celebration of youth and art!

To find out MORE ABOUT OUR SCHOLASTICS EXHIBIT, CLICK HERE.

We’ve come to the end of the first week of a new class session at SBMA, and we’ve found the creative juices flowing in our studies almost intoxicating.  Are you yearning for a winter escape?  A place where you can have fun, unwind, and yet grow at the same time?  Then tell your inner artist to wake up from her long winter’s nap and start creating – it is not too late to register.  The courses we have available promise opportunities for aspiring artists of all interests and ability levels.  Browse our class offerings here: Wntr12Classes and see which artsy itch of yours starts to tingle under those long underwear you’ve got on.  We’d love to see you in our studios!

What’s an SBMA class really like?  CLICK HERE to LEARN MORE about our STUDIO CLASS, LANDSCAPES in PASTELS.

Lovely and inspiring, these sculptures are the work of our 5th grade visitors!

With just a few simple materials and some basic directions, students are able to create these intriguing pieces that add color and beauty to any desk, shelf or display space at home.  To LEARN MORE about this project, CLICK HERE.

Our galleries were a-flurry for the snow soapmen!

Our last Kids’ Night Out event was a huge success – we were thrilled to host dozens of families here in our galleries and to watch our young guests create art.  One of our most popular activities that night was sculpting soap snowmen.   In fact, our staff could barely keep up with the demand for Ivory soap shavings!  We ultimately ran out of supplies and had to promise some of our guests that we’d share the instructions for the project on the blog so that they could try it out at home.  Trust us when we say this will be one of the cleanest, most fragrant ways to make a mess you’ll ever try!  To LEARN MORE about HOW TO DO THIS PROJECT, CLICK HERE.

Everyone deserves an art book for Christmas!

Even if a Kindle is on your wish list this holiday season, we’d like to put in a plug for good old fashioned books – the kinds that come with covers and pages and pictures and look lovely on shelves.  And while browsing the art section of a bookstore sounds like a perfect way to spend an afternoon in December, we realize that a go-to list might also be handy in expediting your gift-giving mission.  If there are children or teens to shop for this year, we’d like to recommend just a few art books that we think are especially fun.  CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR LIST.

Make these soapy snowmen tonight at SBMA's Kids' Night Out!

It’s November 4, and it seems like autumn is putting up a good fight today. The sun is brilliant and the temperature is to hit nearly 60 degrees. But at SBMA, we know better than to buy into Mother Nature’s guile — we’re going to ramp up for winter, full blast!

Tonight from 5 – 7 pm, we’ll be joining Downtown South Bend as hosts of First Friday – Kids’ Night Out. Children of all ages are welcome to drop in at SBMA this evening to create art projects from our Winter Class Blast youth classes; sculpt a soap snowman, try a pottery wheel, and enjoy SBMA instructor, Jim Goodkin’s balloon art.

This is also a great opportunity for families to stop in our Warner Gallery to see Full Deck: A Short History of Skate Art, our current American Series exhibit featuring over 300 skate decks. Our new retail space, The Dot Shop, will be open for shopping as well.

Don’t hibernate – create!