LGS Recreation and New Museum Los Gatos (NUMU) are partnering to bring you a fun day filled with arts, crafts, and immersive activities inspired by National Diversity Day. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to celebrate your family’s diversity through art and history activities led by community partners from Los Gatos and the wider Bay Area. Day-of registration will be accepted at the door as space permits. All children must be accompanied by a registered adult.

Los Gatos Art Association GBAO Juried Exhibition Opening Reception

Thursday, June 15  |  6-8pm

Greater Bay Area Open (GBAO) exhibition is on view at NUMU through August 19. 

The Greater Bay Area Open (GBAO) is a fine art only juried art competition and exhibition presented by the Los Gatos Art Association and held in Los Gatos, CA at NUMU, the New Museum of Los Gatos. GBAO is open to artists in the greater Bay Area. The 2017 juror is well-known and highly respected artist and teacher, George Rivera.

The Los Gatos Art Association (LGAA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the enrichment and support of the arts community. Our mission is to promote creative expression in the pictorial and allied arts by fostering high standards, extending appreciation, and encouraging cooperation and camaraderie among artists. Membership is open to all artists and art supporters. www.lgaa.org 

Thursday, May 19 | 7 - 8pm | Free with admission

A piece of felt or straw, a cloud of steam and a wooden hat block are the essential ingredients for the making of a hand blocked hat. Take a peek inside the world of hat making craft.
Behind every elegant hat is the shaping tool known as a hat block. The hat block is a tool made for the millinery trade by a skilled woodcraft artisan. While the hat block has practical use in the studio, alone it is an amazing artistic achievement. The felt and straw is pulled or “blocked” over these wood forms while hot and damp with steam, giving the desired shape, then tied with cords to hold the materials in place. The hat then needs to dry before removal from the hat block. The hat blocks are infinite in variety and complexity. “The job of a contemporary milliner or hat maker is to utilize these vintage and contemporary hat blocks in innovative ways, not just using the obvious shape, but to combine the forms and tease out their hidden expression."

Wayne Wichern’s millinery design and teaching career evolved out of his experiences as a floral designer, classical ballet dancer and his interest in fashion and costume design. He has created hats for theater productions of the Belfry Theater in Victoria, BC, Art Club Theater, Vancouver, BC, San Francisco Ballet, Seattle Repertory Theater, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His innovative hat designs are in collections of the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, WA. 

Thursday, May 5 | 11am - 2pm | $10 admission and materials fee for nonmembers, $5 materials fee for members

Learn collage basics, freestyle collage, mandala collage, create a custom deck of transpersonal collage cards, or create your own vision board. The art of expressive collage is fun and creative for all ages and experience. You are welcome to supplement class materials with your own. No registration required, all ages welcome. 

Thursday, April 28 | 11am - 2pm | Free admission for members; $5 admission for non-members | $5 materials fee payable to the class instructor (members and non-members) 

Learn collage basics, freestyle collage, mandala collage, create a custom deck of transpersonal collage cards, or create your own vision board. The art of expressive collage is fun and creative for all ages and experience. You are welcome to supplement class materials with your own. No registration required, all ages welcome. 

Sunday, April 24 | 2 - 3pm | Free with Admission 

Born in Hollywood, Judy Dater studied drawing and painting at UCLA and received her MA in Photography from San Francisco State University in 1966. She began her career photographing the landscape, but felt the urge to incorporate the figure, feeling that the landscape was incomplete without a human presence. Ultimately her images focused on the human face and body, particularly female. She has photographed herself and other women clothed and unclothed in a variety of environments, including their homes, which pose questions about women’s roles, life choices and the media. 

Saturday, April 23 | 12 - 3pm | Cost is $10 per participant, materials included 

Kids, and those young at heart, will explore hands-on art stations, crafts, and live art demos all in celebration of EARTH DAY. Experience the rich talent and diversity of local artists and instructors and explore New Museum Los Gatos, bringing art, innovation, history, and Bay Area Stories to the wide audience of Silicon Valley.

Located at New Museum Los Gatos and the Los Gatos Town Plaza

Thursday, April 14 | 7 - 8pm | $10 for Members, $15 for Non Members

Painter Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) came of age in the New York of the 1950s, where she went up against the masculine art world to become a leading Abstract Expressionist.  In her slide lecture, “Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter,” Patricia Albers will present some of Mitchell’s most emotionally powerful paintings based on memories of her feelings about particular landscapes at particular moments.  From New York, Mitchell moved to France, where her work continued to evolve in artistic dialogue with that of van Gogh, Matisse, and others.  She became one of the century’s great colorists.  After two decades of relative obscurity, Mitchell re-emerged in the 1980s with often-immense canvases that are spontaneous and rigorous, lyrical and tough.  Albers will show why and how they were created, ending with such late masterworks as the La Grande Vallée suite, the Sunflowers, and Ici.

Patricia Albers is the author of Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter: A Life, the first biography of abstract painter Joan Mitchell.  Her previous book was Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti.  She has also curated numerous exhibitions and written catalog essays and art reviews for publications including the New York Times, the San José Mercury News, and squarecylinder.  Albers teaches art history at San Jose State University.  She has received a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant, a Ucross Foundation Writing Residency, and an ERFA grant.  She is currently working on a biography of Hungarian-born photographer André Kertész.

Saturday, April 9 | 2 - 3pm | Free with Admission 

Phillip Hua is a San Francisco based artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries and art fairs nationally and internationally. In 2014, he was selected by Kenneth Baker, former art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, as one of five artists to exhibit at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. In the same year, he was shortlisted for the Young Masters Art Prize, a non-profit wing of the Cynthia Corbett Gallery (London), which recognizes young artists who reference old masters. Just this year, he was selected as one of five artists to create artwork for the pilot art program, Art in Muni, in which artists produce work to be featured inside San Francisco Muni buses.

Hua has participated in group shows at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California and SFMOMA. Hua is a member of the adjunct faculty at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco where he teaches Digital Media.

Saturday, April 9 | 1 - 3:30pm | $20 for participation in the workshop | All ages, 7 and under must be accompanied by a parent

TAPIGAMI is the art of applying imagination to masking tape. Created and developed over the last 10 years by Sacramento Artist Danny Scheible. TAPIGAMI uses the inexpensive and accessible material of tape to create complex and fantastical sculptures. Students will learn the basic techniques of creating TAPIGAMI sculptures, while turning the strangers around them into friends. TAPIGAMI classes are designed to be fun, interactive and social. 

Danny Scheible created Tapigami as his primary artform while studying contemporary and fine art at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A native of Sacramento, Danny returned home to spread his new art form across the globe from his studio, now based in Curtis Park, and has watched as Tapigami has spread across California, the corners of the United States, and as far away as classrooms in South Africa. 

Space is limited and reservations are required. Pre-registration, limited to 20 participants, all ages. Supplies and admission to NUMU are included in the workshop fee. To make your reservation, please fill out the registration form below, or contact the NUMU administrative offices at 408-354-2646.

Sunday, April 3 | 2 - 3pm | Free with Admission 

Kim Frohsin began exhibiting in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1990s, and in 1993 was included with Nathan Olivera, Manuel Neri and Stephen De Staebler in the exhibit Four Figures from the Bay. With Wayne Thiebaud as the juror, she won the California Society of Printmakers' Award in 1996, and the following year exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco in Bay Area Art: The Morgan Flagg Collection.

Frohsin works in several media: painting, drawing, printmaking, and mixed media. Her subjects include the female figure, landscapes and cityscapes, as well as objects and series that attract her attention, and which are most often autobiographical in nature. Frohsin received her BFA from The Academy of Art College in San Francisco. She has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and her work can be found in both private and public collections including The Coca-Cola Corporation, Heritage Communications, Atlanta, GA; The Gap Inc., San Francisco, CA; The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; and The San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA.

Thursday, March 31 | 7 - 8pm | Free with Admission

Linda Christensen received her fine arts education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1985 and a Graduate Certificate the following year. Born in Berkeley, and currently residing and working in Santa Cruz, Christensen has always drawn inspiration and serenity from her natural surrounds, especially the coast. The horizon line has been present in the artist’s life since she was born and is featured in nearly all of her works. In her evocative paintings of ocean landscapes and domestic interiors this linear reference to her past and present is always there. While her work is deeply personal, Christensen ultimately pays homage to the universality of human emotion. More than merely observing the figure, the viewer is invited to sympathize with the subject.

Christensen states: “It is not enough to simply observe; we understand ourselves and others through feeling, through checking in emotionally. As a child I was always in tune with the subtle shifts in mood of those around me and this sensitive observation of strangers has continued to inspire my work as an artist. I catch people who are in a private place and are turned within. It is a brief moment, but something that we all do without being aware. There’s something magical in seeing the humanness in others as they turn inwards, reflectively, but uncritically.” 

Christensen has been represented by galleries in New York, Carmel, Laguna Beach, Dallas, and Ketchum, Idaho. Her work is prized in numerous collections across the United States, including the Crocker Art Museum of Fresno, the George Blair Collection, and Nordstrom.

Sunday, March 20 | 1 - 4pm | $15 Materials Fee

Inspired by our current exhibition, More Than Your Selfie, you will create your own shadow selfie’s! Participants will create a silhouette self-portrait, and then use collage and their own drawings to fill their self-portrait in with the colors and imagery that represent their likes, dislikes, and all other aspects of what makes them unique! Drop-in anytime between 1pm and 4pm, no registration required. All ages welcome, all children under 7 must be accompanied by an adult.

Elizabeth Greer has been working with elementary and middle school students for over 15 years. She is a long-time member and past president of the Art Docents of Los Gatos. An active Maker, Elizabeth enjoys exploring the intersection of art, science and technology with students while creating projects like rockets, digital art and photography, and LED artworks in classes at NUMU and the Los Gatos Recreation Department.

Pre-registration is not required for drop-in workshops, but feel free to pay in advance via Paypal. Please select which workshop you will be attending here, no registration form submission is required.

Saturday, March 19 | 2 - 3pm | Free with Admission

Self-examination and the body are important to Erin Feller's work, and self-portraiture has maintained a constant presence. Much of her work is autobiographical. She is concerned with the scope of living inside her mind and body (anatomy and physiology, transformation, disease, and consciousness, emotion and cognition). Feller says "her personal experiences, the life cycle, and nature are... main subjects. Collection and self-examination are two of themost important acts in [her] process, and are often visually exemplified through layers, translucency [and] juxtaposition." Feller uses her art practice to compute, transform, and transmit the discoveries she makes in everyday life. 

Feller received her BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2004. She has participated in multiple solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums both nationaly and abroad, including the Cincinnati Art Museum and Hien Minh Art Gallery, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. 

Thursday, March 17 | 11am - 2pm | $10, admission and materials fee for nonmembers, $5 materials fee for members

Learn collage basics, freestyle collage, mandala collage, create a custom deck of transpersonal collage cards, or create your own vision board. The art of expressive collage is fun and creative for all ages and experience. You are welcome to supplement class materials with your own. No registration required, all ages welcome. 

Sunday, March 13 | 2 - 3pm | Free with Admission 

Julie Heffernan grew up in the West, vacationing in the grand spaces of National Parks and taking in landscapes that inspired artists such as Bierstadt. She received her BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her Masters of Fine Art in Painting from the Yale School of Art.  Her luxuriant paintings are expressions of Heffernan’s knowledge of art history, a passion for the environment and the result of her drawing upon images from her subconscious that she conjures through a meditative type of image streaming. Heffernan considers much of her work as a kind of self-portrait and titles them as such. 

Saturday, March 5 | 2 - 3pm | Free with admission 

“I paint a fusion of two genres: still life and portraiture. I call these paintings Portraits in Absentia. These paintings are memories of lives, real or imagined, of relationships, of spirits, of paths chosen or found.” 

Born and raised in Utah, Elizabeth Barlow studied painting in California and at the Art Students League of New York. She received her MA from University of Virginia. Barlow's work has been exhibited throughout California. Her unique combination of still life and portraiture suggests that objects, such as a pair of shoes, a dress, a shirt, will retain something of the essence of the person who wore them, and can illustrate life stories, choices made and moments passed.  For Barlow, an object can at be once specific to a certain person and also universal in its symbolic evocations, offering the viewer a relatable connection.

Thursday, February 11 | 7-8pm | FREE with admission

Marc D’Estout: Open Investigation aims to explore the artist’s process and decipher the enigmas in D’Estout’s minimalist sculpture. While engaging subconscious surrealist imagery, his sculptures often reveal humor or uncanny associations, addressing fears, personal (mis)communication and social nuance. The work simultaneously communicates the conceptual as well as a sense of utility.

Marc D’Estout was curator at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, served as art director/curator at the Monterey Museum of Art and assistant director/curator at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara. He was director of Art and Design at the UCSC Extension.  He holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree from San Jose State University and received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from California State University at Hayward.

Thursday, February 4 | 7 - 8pm | $10 for Members, $15 for Non-Members

Please join us for a lively conversation about collecting. What inspires people to collect? What guidelines are useful in developing and maintaining a collection? We are honored to present a panel of experts to discuss collecting topics, answer questions and share their latest insights with the community.

Panelists:  Steven Yvaska, Antiques advisor, collector and author of theSeasoned Collector column, San Jose Mercury News; Charlie Adamski, Client Advisor, Christie’s, San Francisco; Karen Imperial, K. Imperial Fine Art, San Francisco and Bryant Street Gallery, Palo Alto; Wanda Kownacki, Collector; and Panel Moderator, Lisa Coscino, Executive Director, New Museum Los Gatos.

Collecting 101: A Panel Discussion is made possible by the generous support of our sponsors: The Michael and Alyce Parsons Foundation, The Town of Los Gatos and Donors to NUMU’s Annual Campaign.