When customers pop into Central Art Supply Company to stock up on paintbrushes and pastels, co-owner Pat Jennings can’t help but be curious. Earlier this year, after an abundance of shoppers confessed to him that they were headed to workshops elsewhere (like North Carolina or New Mexico), curiosity gave way to inspiration — and the Artista Project was born.
The workshop, demo and lecture series invites artists into Central Art Supply Company’s 1,000-sq.-foot studio, three doors down from the store, for a wide range of how-tos themed by artistic medium as well as professional development issues like copyright. (When I pointed out to Jennings that the appeal of escaping to Vermont for a lithography seminar in the dead of August transcended the allure of merely taking an art class, he countered that “holding a watercolor workshop with some rock star [instructor] here in February is equally compelling.”)
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2009.