Adult Workshop

Bring out your inner artist in this adult creative workshop!

Led by guest instructor and artist Laura Raborn, we’ll learn how to add another expressive dimension to an artwork by including language into our compositions. Using techniques honed by Laura’s own practice, we’ll explore how words can become a background, create a subtle message, create an interesting graphic element or pattern, or even be the central element of the artwork.

As part of the workshop, you’ll get step-by-step guidance on how to arrange and glue down words as collage elements, how to add handwriting and carve letters on top of paint, stenciling, and how to hide words and messages with layers of paint or collage. We’ll also look at contemporary artists who use language in visual art such as Christopher Wool, Barbara Kruger, and Mark Bradford to get a better idea of how to work with different materials and subjects.

Beginner-friendly, this program is open to all experience levels and includes all necessary supplies.

Tickets are $55 ($44 for members), reserve your spot online or with Guest Services at (479) 657-2335 today.
Registration includes all materials for the workshop.

Laura Raborn’s paintings are exhibited in multiple collections in Arkansas, the US, and the Bahamas. Her work has earned numerous awards and has appeared in publications such as “Women Make Arkansas: Conversations with 50 Creatives” by Erin Wood of Et Alia Press. An interview about her most recent work can be found at www.arkansasartscene.com/home/interview-with-artist-laura-raborn.

After receiving a BA from Rollins College, Raborn worked in marketing for six years and took evening classes at the Arkansas Arts Center. Later, at UA Little Rock, she earned a master’s in Art while working as a graduate assistant. More recently, she has participated in three prestigious art residencies: the Women’s International Study Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia; and Breck Create in Breckenridge, Colorado. Raborn has also increased her mixed media workshop teaching in various art schools such as the Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride, Colorado and Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Her Little Rock studio is open for appointments and her paintings can be viewed by visiting Justus Fine Art in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and Princess Street Gallery on Harbour Island in the Bahamas.