Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
Autumn leaves will be transformed into art this Saturday as Spark Box Studio’s Chrissy Poitras leads a Museum Kids workshop on screen printing, held at the Lennox and Addington County Museum and Archives.
The workshop gets underway at 10 a.m.
Adding a twist to the traditional screen printing, Poitras will instruct young artists how to create a one-of-a-kind reusable bag, adorned with their own leafy design.
“We’ll have a collection of leaves, some that we will bring and if the weather is kind to us, some the kids can collect on their own,” said Poitras. “They’re going to use the leaves as the printing block, so they’ll be able to roll up the leaves onto textiles. Then they’ll be using those textiles to affix them to a tote bag so that the tote bag will be this collection/pattern of leaves they collected and printed.”
Poitras says she’s done similar workshops with leaves in the past near her studio in Prince Edward County, but noted this would be the first time creating tote bags.
Along with being a very eco-friendly art project, it’s also one that will encourage a lot of creativity.
“They get to glue the fabric onto the tote bag in whatever pattern they want,” she said of the kids who attend Saturday’s workshop. “If they want to put a bunch of leaves all over the place, they can, if they want to do something that repeats, they can or if they want to do something like a little mandala and make a circle, they can do that. We’re going to talk about the options and what the possibilities are and then they have the freedom to do what they like.”
They’ll also have the option of adding some paint to their creations as well. When it’s complete, they get to take it home.
The free workshop is open to all ages, though Poitras notes the younger kids may require some assistance from their parents or guardians.
Museum Kids is a monthly program offered at the L&A County Museum, located at 97 Thomas St. E. in Napanee.