Free for all

Greenbelt’s Artful Afternoons allow families to explore their creative sides

Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Christopher Anderson⁄The Star Woodworking instructor Steve Bernheisel helps 8-year-old Abigail Moore and her sister, 4-year-old Elizabeth, of Berwyn Heights build birdhouses during a recent Artful Afternoon at the Greenbelt Community Center. Artful Afternoons have brought the community together to experience free arts, crafts and entertainment for four years. Click here to enlarge this photo Christopher Anderson⁄The Gazette Maia Tooley (left), 9,blows bubbles into a cupof paint to create uniquestationery designs with her friend Vanessa Phillips, 8,during a recent ArtfulAfternoon at the GreenbeltCommunity Center.

With mom Wendy’s help, daughters Abigail, 8, and Elizabeth, 4, sawed off the four corners of their blocks of wood, then rounded the edges with a rasp.

‘‘Ah, we did it! Girls rule,” Moore told them after sawing the last corner.

The day was also about new experiences. They hadn’t used a saw before, and this was their first visit to the Artful Afternoon, held the first Sunday of each month at the Greenbelt Community Center.

They heard about the event from a friend and decided it was the perfect family activity.

‘‘We may need to make this a [regular] event,” Moore said. ‘‘It’s a beautiful day to be out doing something.”

Several of the hundreds who attended the Artful Afternoon said they came for similar reasons. And the Greenbelt recreation department’s event organizers had dozens of activities in which they could participate, including knitting, darkroom printing, creating stationery designs and attending concerts.

The main function of the Artful Afternoon is to expose the community to the visual and performing arts, said Nicole DeWald, arts coordinator for the recreation department.

‘‘This is often the first arts program many will attend in Greenbelt. This is a great way to welcome them,” she said.

But this most recent Artful Afternoon was more extensive than others because the center also was celebrating its 10th anniversary.

The department has seen the Artful Afternoon grow by leaps and bounds through word of mouth in the past four years it has been offered, DeWald said.

If you go What: Artful Afternoon When: 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday Where: Greenbelt Community Center, 15 Crescent Road, Greenbelt Cost: Free For more information: Call Call 301-397-2208

‘‘It has become a regular event for a lot of our members,” she said.

Friends and neighbors

Greenbelt residents Laura and Shawn O’Neil and their 6-year-old son Brian said they have attended eight Artful Afternoons over the past year because they like meeting their friends and neighbors as well as creating things for their home.

‘‘We enjoy the variety of activities,” Laura O’Neil said as Brian waited for woodworking instructor Steve Bernheisel to drill holes for a screw and dowel in his birdhouse.

Wearing large blue safety goggles, Brian was pleased with the result.

‘‘I hope a bird moves in,” he told his parents.

The woodworking workshop was a big hit with the Moores, too.

‘‘We didn’t expect we’d make something so beautiful,” Wendy Moore said. ‘‘I think we’ll be hearing about this for weeks to come about how they made the birdhouse.”

The woodworking workshop, with its hammering, sawing and drilling, was among the most popular of the day.

Families lined up outside the classroom for the chance to participate, but Bernheisel said he had to keep the number small to assure that he could give each child attention. The session, held in 40-minute increments, ran for a total of two hours.

The day had more than just creative and visual arts. Folk music act Spelkamraterna dressed in traditional Swedish attire and played Swedish folk tunes while wandering the center’s halls. The Greenbelt Concert Band and the Creative Kids Camp Reunion Chorus also performed.

Artists who weren’t teaching classes also participated by opening their studios in the center and allowing the public to wander through. They get a kick out of interacting with the public, said tile artist Mary Gawlik of Cheverly.

The best part of being based at the center, she said, is learning from other artists with diverse styles who specialize in several media.

‘‘We hear from artists who take classes here and say this is unusual,” she said.

Gawlik said she frequently gains a new perspective on a piece she didn’t care for but someone else did. And the public gets to learn about the process of repeated firings she uses to create her clay works.

‘‘It’s exciting for us to share what we’re doing. We love to get the reaction,” she said.

Similarly, Bernheisel and other instructors said they enjoy teaching their arts to the public.

‘‘It gives them a chance to be creative and try new things,” said Amanda Gordon, who taught a workshop on decorating stationery.

As part of the session, she poured liquid starch into pans, then dribbled in watered-down acrylic craft paints. She swirled the colors slightly and laid a piece of paper on top, then lifted it out and laid it on newspaper to dry. The room full of children and their parents oohed and aahed.

‘‘There’s a process of discovery when they make swirly designs and see how it comes out,” said Gordon, who has taught at the center since March.

The paper princess

Seven-year-old Rosie Harrington-Walton of College Park was one of those children impressed by Gordon. She signed up for Gordon’s class because she likes arts and crafts, said Donna Harrington, her mother.

‘‘She’s a very big fan of stationery. Her birthday’s in January and she’s already made all her invitations,” she said.

This wasn’t their first exposure to activities at the community center. They’ve participated in First Night activities—nonalcoholic events to celebrate the New Year—and three or four Artful Afternoons.

After Gordon showed the class how to clean the starch by wiping rolled newspaper across the top, Harrington and her husband, David Walton, said they thought they could create a similar setup for Rosie at home.

‘‘Childhood is all about being messy. Don’t become a parent if you don’t want to make a mess,” Harrington said.

Families received similar lessons during other activities.

DeWald helped children made photograms, which are created in a manner similar to photographs, but without film. The process is something like a digital photograph, she said.

Objects such as coins, keys, combs and pieces of glass are placed on a sheet of glass and taken into a dark room, she said. An enlarger is shone upon the glass, and the objects block the light, depending on how opaque or transparent they are. The rest of the photogram is either black or gray.

Eight-year-old Tinka Long of Greenbelt said she didn’t know until then that all photographs at one point were made without film.

Meanwhile, Bernheisel helped the Moores with hammering their nails, even though Abigail and Elizabeth were eager to plow ahead.

‘‘What’d I do wrong?” Abigail asked him.

‘‘Nothing really. The nails are just in the wrong spot. You did a good job on the nailing, actually,” he said, then instructed her how to redo it.

The sides to one of the family’s birdhouses didn’t line up evenly, but that wasn’t a big problem, Bernheisel told them. That house would give the bird a little more ventilation, he said positively.

He also told them to clean the house once a year by taking out a screw in the roof and lifting it off. And when the girls asked if they could decorate the house, he advised against it.

‘‘If you’re going to use it for birds, they like plain old boards. If you’re going to use it for decoration, a picture will be just fine,” Bernheisel told them.

Moore said the girls plan to hang one birdhouse in the front yard and one in the back.

As the family began to leave the session, Elizabeth said proudly, ‘‘We’re going to have a lot of arts to bring home.”

E-mail Jennifer Donatelli at jdonatelli@gazette.net.