Paint the town… but remain indoors.
A Park Slope art studio is hosting online customized art classes, offering Brooklyn’s would-be van Goghs a creative outlet while they’re cooped-up in quarantine.
“All children, they thrive on routine, and when that routine goes out the window it’s really hard,” said Valeen Bhat, who runs Fifth Avenue’s Private Picassos. “It’s important to keep some kind of learning going.”
The studio is offering both private custom lessons for kids and families, along with public group classes, with prices beginning at $10.
And to further avoid the scary outdoors, the customized classes will be molded to whatever materials the aspiring artists already have in their home — ensuring they won’t have to brave the infected outside.
The teachers will also cater to various ages and skill levels, and offer classes in several different fields of interest — including drawing technique, clay modeling, and bookmaking.
The group classes, which will run for 30 minutes, will work with a predetermined theme for each class — like one upcoming class with a “silly faces” theme — and parents will be given a list of the necessary materials beforehand, which Bhat says are kept as simple as possible and include household items and recycled materials that most houses would have on hand to begin with.
And the projects students work on will be perfectly suited for a cramped Brooklyn apartment, Bhat says, with no need for a professional studio.
“We don’t have big houses, I don’t have a craft room set up,” she said. “I’m just trying to keep it as real as possible.”
The studio had been running private in-home classes for years before the recent stay-at-home mandates, and Bhat says they hope to keep their video classes as similar to their existing programming as possible.
“We’re trying to keep it similar to the in-home classes we were previously running,” she said. “It’s not a one size fits all, it’s not a script we’re reading, we’re going to be totally live interacting with the students in real-time.”
Online art classes at Private Picassos (www.privatepicassos.com/online-art-classses) Private classes: $64 per class for one student, $90 per class for two students, $100 per class for three siblings. Group classes: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10-10:35 am. $10 per class.
