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Local visual artist offers Art Night Series to community

One of the community’s local visual artists is encouraging other art enthusiasts to gather at

One of the community’s local visual artists is encouraging other art enthusiasts to gather at her home to share and express their creativity twice a month.

Marian Shilka, having been an artist herself for many years, wants to provide a space for creative people to mingle and experience other’s creativity.

She describes this gathering as being informal and plans to offer different types of art based activities each meet up.

“What I hope to see is that people will get more creative as it goes on and hopefully see some people come back for more than one night,”Shilka said.

Some of the things she plans to arrange include demonstrations, discussions on art history, mini classes and guest speakers. Other times can be just for sharing creative ideas and discussing them.

In these sessions Shilka plans on asking those who attend what they would like to see and do in future sessions. This way she can try to foster their desires to explore the world of art.

“It could be a quick session on doing water colour sketches or a session on doing mixed media acrylic,” she said.

She also plans on opening up her sessions to anything that is art related. This could include music with musicians sharing information on how to play an instrument or how to write songs.

“It’s not just a painting type class,” Shilka said. “What I am hoping to see is different creative people coming together. It’s like an appreciation of the different arts.”

“I want to acknowledge the creativity in our community,” she added.

The first session was Feb. 10 where people made cards for Valentine’s Day. The next session is planned for Feb. 24 and Shilka is gearing towards art or visual journaling.

Art or visual journaling is taking an actual art journal or sketchbook and creating visual pieces that are accompanied by the artist’s own personal thoughts.

“It’s a very private kind of journaling but there’s the visual aspect to it as well,” Shilka said.

She will offer her Art Night Series sessions Wednesdays 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., twice a month until May 25.

Those interested in participating should call Marian Shilka at 780-518-4744 or email her at mjshilka@gmail.com.

reporter@sylvanlakenews.com