Arts on Main

Community Arts Center in Gloucester, Virginia

3 Day (March 29-March 31) Heirloom Collage & Mixed Media Exploration with Theresa Wells Stifel

3 Day Heirloom Collage & Mixed Media Exploration with Theresa Wells Stifel
Wednesday, March 29 – Friday, March 31
1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

 

Create your own mixed media masterpieces using those little pieces of memories too precious to throw away! Your quirky snippets, papers, jewelry, fabric, or any small odds and ends can be layered to create a charming and personal piece of art. If you want to practice without worrying about ruining a special object, extra supply packets will be available to purchase for $5 a bag so you can play with a free spirit.

You will learn how to layer paint, paper, photos, trims, fabric and more.  We will learn different types of gluing, fusing and stitching methods to build interesting layers for your pieces. We will discuss and play with mark making, color, texture and pattern, answering questions along the way. Feel free to email the instructor with any questions: theresa@stifelandcapra.com

Supply list for class:

3 stretched canvases 8×10 or smaller
Your 3 favorite colors of acrylic paint
Matte medium
2 or three paint brushes – inexpensive is fine
Container for water
Fragrance free baby wipes
Paper towels
Scissors
Large eyed tapestry needle
Photos or images
And the fun things: papers, trims, buttons, ticket stubs, fabric scraps, metal objects, shells, pebbles – whatever is in that drawer or box that you want to get out in view!

Cost of the 3 day class is $215.00 per student.

Registration deadline is Saturday, March 25 by 5pm.




 

About the Instructor 

Currently residing in Gloucester County, Virginia, Theresa Wells Stifel was raised in a military/NASA family. Frequent global moves and wide-ranging duty stations gave her a wide range of life experiences and influences that fed her creative life.

Wells Stifel learned traditional craft, painting and needle working skills from her mother, every artistic interest was encouraged. “If I expressed an interest in a medium, from oil painting to wood burning, I was sure to find it gifted the next birthday or Christmas. This enabled me to really explore a wide range of tools, subjects and colors.”

Settling in the Washington DC metro area as a young adult, Wells Stifel moved from managing a photography studio to a recruiting career that lasted almost twenty years.  The arts were always a parallel effort. Moving on from her corporate job enabled her to concentrate on family and creativity.

After a blood infection cost her husband a leg and almost his life Wells Stifel was galvanized to create a family business that enabled them to care for her family.   Stifel & Capra, a 3000 square foot locals’ art gallery and vintage business, was born.

Stifel & Capra hosted monthly art shows, art classes, artist studios and provided a “home away from home” for creatives and design aficionados.

Inspired by her resident artists, Wells Stifel continued her art practice. Alexandria’s Art League, the Arlington Art Alliance Gallery Underground, Montgomery County’s Artist & Makers Studios and Tanglewood Works, Loudon County’s D’Amore Productions, Tysons Corner’s First Stage, Falls Church, VA’s Falls Church Arts and Alexia Scott’s Studio Gallery, Gloucester’s Arts on Main and Gloucester Arts Festival all hosted shows where her works were shown and sold. She curated Vienna’s “Artist Helping Others” Shows hosted at Vienna Presbyterian Church as well as multiple shows at Falls Church Arts and Stifel & Capra.

Primarily self-taught, Wells Stifel is known for incorporating vintage ephemera and hand stitching into her work. She thrives on fashioning vintage goods and techniques into something contemporary and is fascinated with the female form and the play of color on water.   During her career Wells Stifel has been featured in the Falls Church News Press, the Fairfax Times, the Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal, and the Washington Post.

1 Day Heirloom Collage & Mixed Media Exploration with Theresa Wells Stifel

1 Day Heirloom Collage & Mixed Media Exploration with Theresa Wells Stifel
Saturday, February 25
12:30pm – 4:30pm

 

Create your own mixed media masterpieces using those little pieces of memories too precious to throw away! Your quirky snippets, papers, jewelry, fabric, or any small odds and ends can be layered to create a charming and personal piece of art. If you want to practice without worrying about ruining a special object, extra supply packets will be available to purchase for $5 a bag so you can play with a free spirit.

You will learn how to layer paint, paper, photos, trims, fabric and more.  We will learn different types of gluing, fusing and stitching methods to build interesting layers for your pieces. We will discuss and play with mark making, color, texture and pattern, answering questions along the way. Feel free to email the instructor with any questions: theresa@stifelandcapra.com

Supply list for class:

3 stretched canvases 8×10 or smaller
Your 3 favorite colors of acrylic paint
Matte medium
2 or three paint brushes – inexpensive is fine
Container for water
Fragrance free baby wipes
Paper towels
Scissors
Large eyed tapestry needle
Photos or images
And the fun things: papers, trims, buttons, ticket stubs, fabric scraps, metal objects, shells, pebbles – whatever is in that drawer or box that you want to get out in view!

Cost of class is $95 per student.

Registration deadline is Thursday, February 23 by 5pm.




About the Instructor 

Currently residing in Gloucester County, Virginia, Theresa Wells Stifel was raised in a military/NASA family. Frequent global moves and wide-ranging duty stations gave her a wide range of life experiences and influences that fed her creative life.

Wells Stifel learned traditional craft, painting and needle working skills from her mother, every artistic interest was encouraged. “If I expressed an interest in a medium, from oil painting to wood burning, I was sure to find it gifted the next birthday or Christmas. This enabled me to really explore a wide range of tools, subjects and colors.”

Settling in the Washington DC metro area as a young adult, Wells Stifel moved from managing a photography studio to a recruiting career that lasted almost twenty years.  The arts were always a parallel effort. Moving on from her corporate job enabled her to concentrate on family and creativity.

After a blood infection cost her husband a leg and almost his life Wells Stifel was galvanized to create a family business that enabled them to care for her family.   Stifel & Capra, a 3000 square foot locals’ art gallery and vintage business, was born.

Stifel & Capra hosted monthly art shows, art classes, artist studios and provided a “home away from home” for creatives and design aficionados.

Inspired by her resident artists, Wells Stifel continued her art practice. Alexandria’s Art League, the Arlington Art Alliance Gallery Underground, Montgomery County’s Artist & Makers Studios and Tanglewood Works, Loudon County’s D’Amore Productions, Tysons Corner’s First Stage, Falls Church, VA’s Falls Church Arts and Alexia Scott’s Studio Gallery, Gloucester’s Arts on Main and Gloucester Arts Festival all hosted shows where her works were shown and sold. She curated Vienna’s “Artist Helping Others” Shows hosted at Vienna Presbyterian Church as well as multiple shows at Falls Church Arts and Stifel & Capra.

Primarily self-taught, Wells Stifel is known for incorporating vintage ephemera and hand stitching into her work. She thrives on fashioning vintage goods and techniques into something contemporary and is fascinated with the female form and the play of color on water.   During her career Wells Stifel has been featured in the Falls Church News Press, the Fairfax Times, the Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal, and the Washington Post.

Beginners Watercolor Class with Jan Finn-Duffy: Pelican

Beginners Watercolor Class with Jan Finn-Duffy: Pelican
Wednesday, March 8
1:00pm – 3:00pm

Join watercolor artist Jan Finn-Duffy for a fun class of mixing paint and water to create an original piece of art!  No skills are necessary when you arrive, but don’t be surprised if you have a few watercolor skills when you leave!  All supplies are provided by the instructor.  Just come to experience the joy and fun of painting!

Cost is $40 per person.

Registration deadline is Tuesday, March 7 by 5pm.




 

Beginners Watercolor Paint Night with Jan Finn-Duffy: Sea Turtle

Beginners Watercolor Paint Night with Jan Finn-Duffy: Sea Turtle
Friday, February 17
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Join watercolor artist Jan Finn-Duffy for a fun evening of mixing paint and water to create an original piece of art!  No skills are necessary when you arrive, but don’t be surprised if you have a few watercolor skills when you leave!  All supplies are provided by the instructor.  Just come to experience the joy and fun of painting!

Cost is $40 per person.

Registration deadline is Wednesday, February 15 by 5pm.




 

Adult Paper Flower Class with Ronda Bowden: Roses

Adult Paper Flower Class with Ronda Bowden
Jan 31st-Roses
1:00pm-2:30pm

Paper flower artist, Ronda Bowden will teach you techniques to create realistic and whimsical flowers with paper. This week students will be creating roses.

*The class fee is $25 and there is a one-time supply fee of $25. Your supply fee will provide you with all the tools you need to create flowers in class and at home.
Registration deadline: Saturday, January 28 @ 5pm

Class Sign Up Options



March 2023 First Friday: “Between Layers” by Rose Nygaard & Aprille Zammit

March 2023 First Friday: “Between Layers” by Rose Nygaard & Aprille Zammit

Friday, March 3

6:00pm – 8:00pm

Sponsored by Lourdes & Don Parker

 

During the month of March, Arts on Main will host a collaborative exhibit, “Between Layers,” featuring artwork by grandmother and granddaughter duo, Rose Nygaard & Aprille Zammit. The opening of the exhibit will take place at our First Friday event on Friday, March 3rd from 6:00pm-8:00pm. The show will run from March 3rd thru April 2nd.

Between Layers

The potent smell of acrylics and oils swirls together in a light-drenched studio, scattered with all colours imaginable…… Mexican music envelopes the room creating the lightness of a dance floor……… A space where it felt possible to create anything your imagination dreamt up…… Every summer Aprille got to step into that space of endless possibilities with her grandmother Rose.

“Between Layers” is the first time the two artists are showing a collection of work together. Rose is an abstract expressionist painter and printmaker. Inspired by colour, she builds layers upon layers of it in her paintings, monoprints, and collages. Rose graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from The American University in Washington, DC. Aprille is a multidisciplinary creative, with her two main mediums being film photography and screen printing. Inspired by nature, with reverence to the sea and capturing unnoticed moments of light. Aprille graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

For this collaboration, Aprille travelled from her studio in Malta, Europe, to Gloucester, Virginia in 2022 to spend three weeks creating work together with Rose. “Between Layers” is a body of work in which the two artists played off each other’s different styles and backgrounds of working. Rose begins with colour, and Aprille begins with composition. Both artists layer the two to make their work. Rose and Aprille hope the work will ignite joy and lightness in the viewer.

 

Rose Nygaard
“I always begin my work with one colour which I then react to with the next colour and continue in this way. I have been using Acrylic paints for the last thirty years. I use Golden and Liquitex most of the time. I love the Transparent colors.  Mixing some of these colors make very beautiful unusual colors, adding black or white will make the colors opaque.
I began my work without preparation; not knowing the outcome. It becomes a challenge to make it become a painting that I have not seen before. It is a challenge that I love. Creating a piece of Art, for me, is a way open for self-expression, and learning more about my likes and dislikes. It gives me visual language.”

 

Aprille Zammit
“The collaboration is the result of a bond created throughout the past 25 years. From a young age, I have always been an observer in my grandmother’s studio. Through film photography I began capturing moments in her process of making, watching her getting lost in a world of colour. This inspired me to do the same. Together with my grandmother we would critique her works, highlight areas that worked and others that didn’t. Pieces were cropped from within the painting to create other compositions, which at times required starting afresh over a “clean canvas” and often resulting in a multi-layered application. In this collaboration, I layered my work on top of her paintings to represent a continuum of her approach. I extracted elements forming the composition or the landscape of Rose’s art pieces and formed a symbiotic expression by layering the extractions in the form of lines and shapes onto the original art piece. Acrylic pens as well as the screen printing process were utilized to produce the work.”

 

Live music will be provided by Something Different Duo (Brad Sindle & Ashley Wenner). This father/daughter duo who have been performing together since 2013 at public and private events. Check out their website to learn more about them: Somethingdifferntduo.com

 

First Friday is on March 3rd  from 6:00pm-8:00pm. This event is free and open to the public.  Light refreshments will be provided. Beer and wine will be available for purchase.

Thank you to our First Friday & Exhibit Sponsors, Lourdes & Don Parker!