Friday, April 10, 1-3pm (Early Release Day at St Johnsbury School)

Catamount Arts Center

Instructor: Abby Maier Johnson

In honor of National Poetry Month and as part of PoemTown St. Johnsbury, create your own poetry and visual artwork in one piece. Blackout poetry is a process of subtracting words from an existing text to express a new meaning. We’ll create artwork right on the page to illustrate the newly discovered poems.

Class fee: $20. Registration in advance is required. We are committed to offering high quality arts experiences for all students, regardless of ability to pay. If you need financial assistance, please contact Anne Campbell at 802-748-2600 ext 109 to learn about scholarships.

Abby Maier Johnson has over 20 years of experience working with children in libraries, schools, museums, and community centers. Her work as a teaching artist has often focused on using everyday materials to create sculptures, puppets, and masks. She currently students in PreK through 8th grade as the art teacher at The Riverside School in Lyndonville, and loves exploring all kinds of visual art with her students. 

Saturdays, April 11, May 9, June 13, 10am-noon

Catamount Arts Center

Instructor: Abby Maier Johnson

Explore the work in the Catamount Arts galleries by making your own art creations! Classes will meet once a month. Students will spend time looking at the work in the galleries and then create projects inspired by a piece in the show. 

Class fee: $20 per session. Registration in advance is required. We are committed to offering high quality arts experiences for all students, regardless of ability to pay. If you need financial assistance, please contact Anne Campbell at 802-748-2600 ext 109 to learn about scholarships.

Abby Maier Johnson has over 20 years of experience working with children in libraries, schools, museums, and community centers. Her work as a teaching artist has often focused on using everyday materials to create sculptures, puppets, and masks. She currently works with students in PreK through 8th grade as the art teacher at The Riverside School in Lyndonville, and loves exploring all kinds of visual art with her students.

Friday, April 17th, 7:00PM - 8:00PM

Harvey Academic Center 111

$10 suggested donation

ages 13 - 18

Storyboarding is an essential phase of any animated film. Join professional illustrator and VTSU Professor Barclay Tucker for a lively, hands-on workshop. Through a series of drawing exercises, Barclay will teach participants how to create engaging visual narratives. You will also learn how storyboards are used in the animation industry. No experience necessary.

Barclay Tucker continues to live his dream of being an illustrator, designer, artist and teacher. He resides among the hills of The Northeast Kingdom in Vermont with his wife and four children. He teaches illustration, drawing, art history, and graphic design in the Department of Visual Arts at Northern Vermont University – Lyndon. You can check out his work at www.barclay-studio.com.

Friday, April 17th, 8:00PM - 9:00PM

Harvey Academic Center 110

$10 suggested donation

ages 13 - 18

Whether you’re an experienced animator or you just like to draw, this workshop is for you! We will use cintiq tablets in the VTSU animation and illustration studio to create several different animated sequences. No experience necessary.

Kate Renner is an Assistant Professor of Visual Art at Vermont State University, where she teaches courses in Drawing, Animation, and 3D Modeling. She is also the Director of the Vermont Animation Festival.

Saturday, April 18th from 9:00 - 12:00PM

VTSU-Lyndon campus, specific location TBA

$10.00 suggested donation

ages 8 and up

Pixelation is animating people frame by frame and in this playful, hands-on workshop you’ll work together to use your body and objects to create wild animations (like turning into objects, melting into the floor, or being moved by a giant hand). We’ll finish the session by watching your mini films on the screen together.

Dale Hayward and Sylvie Trouvé are See Creature Productions. Their work embraces mixing the hand-crafted, traditional animation techniques with the latest digital technologies and software. Film projects include the feature film The Little Prince (dir. Marc Osbourne, 2015), Bone Mother (2018), If I Was God (dir. Cordell Baker, 2016), Les Emerveilleurs (2022), and Melodia Torrential (dir. Jose Luis Saturno, 2022). Commercial clients include Nike, Hot Wheels, Tim Horton's, and many non-profit organizations.

Saturday, April 18th from 1:00 - 3:00PM

Harvey Academic Center 110

$10.00 suggested donation

ages 10 and up; students younger than 10 should be accompanied by a helpful adult

Participants will get to try out direct drawing and etching techniques on 16mm film for a tactile animation experience. There will be a concise introduction to the medium of 16mm film and mechanics of projection. Working frame by frame in a collaborative setting, we will create a short experimental film that considers the potentials of handmade film, including how image is used to make sound in the optical track. Animators will explore the range of movement that is available in a small frame size, from the nearly impossible ‘hold’ to the much more natural ‘strobe’ and ‘morphing’ techniques. We’ll look at inspiring examples of direct-animated films to get us started. The film we create will be screened at the conclusion of the workshop.

Open to all ages and levels of experience; students 10 and under should be accompanied by a helpful adult.

Leif Goldberg lives and works in Vermont with his family. Leif is an independent experimental visual artist whose drawings and prints have been published in numerous anthologies. His animated film work has been showcased at Anthology Film Archives, and as part of the collaboration with Forcefield at the 2002 Whitney Biennial. Having taught both film and animation at the college level, he currently facilitates art workshops for kids and adults of all abilities.

Saturday, April 18th from 1:00 - 3:00PM

Harvey Academic Center 110

$10.00 suggested donation

ages 8 and up

This workshop is for artists at any stage and any level of experience who want to jump into character creation. Students will create a character -- first from a template and then on their own if they wish. Ally will demonstrate what makes a strong foundation for each artist's specific needs, whether it be game design to illustration to portfolio building. No experience necessary.

Known as 'Ally Olsen' on an outdated LinkedIn page and 'ponyprospector' everywhere else, this Vermont State University alumni has a childlike passion and fascination with animation that never left. She especially has a fondness for character animation (and cats).

Thursday, April 23 and 30, 6-7:30pm

Catamount Arts Center

Instructor: Jessie Rothwell 

Sometimes music feels like sorcery in the moment. Melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre can become more than the sum of their parts in a piece of music. When lyrics combine with sounds, even more magic can come into it. What is happening when certain songs give us goosebumps or make us cry? How do particular songs transport us back to certain settings or moments, even many years later? If you are curious about all this and want to explore it through listening, writing and discussion, join us. We will unpack how different areas of the brain take in music and language and work in conjunction with the areas of the brain in charge of memory and emotion. 

Class fee: $50 (10% discount for Catamount Arts members) Please contact Anne at 802-748-2600 ext 109 to inquire about financial assistance. 

Jessie Rothwell of Takoma Park, Maryland is a writer, storyteller and musician. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Barrelhouse, Gargoyle, the Grace & Gravity journal series, Breadcrumbs magazine, and on Minnesota Public Radio’s Classical blog. She has sung Balkan traditional and other types of music with the Balkan women's vocal ensemble Orfeia and as a member of the band Mezhdou. She participated in Season 19 of AWP's Writer to Writer mentorship during 2023/2024. She holds an MFA in music composition from the California Institute of the Arts. Find her meditations on life at https://jessierothwell.substack.com/.