NEW
Kids’ Kits are Back!
Available for pick-up by donation
We’ve put together fun project-based art kits for creative kids who visit the gallery. Each kit will be released monthly and available by donation. Each one will contain instructions for a hands-on arts and crafts project as well as the required set of materials. We’re so excited to see what your little artists create with these kits!
Try a workshop at home with Seymour Online
Seymour Online is a series of free online workshops for kids, families, and adults, to bring inspiration and creative projects to your home. Featuring different projects from amazing local artists!
Past workshops
Summer Art Camps
August 22 – 26, 2022 | 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. each day
Ages 8 – 12 | $211.77 per child
This week-long Summer Camp at the Seymour Art Gallery with teacher Jennifer Butterfield will be spent exploring various materials. We’ll mount our own mini-exhibition for family and friends on the last day of camp, to celebrate together and share the artwork created in class.
Jennifer Butterfield loves living and working in Deep Cove. She has taught elementary school and art programs in North Vancouver for over 25 years. When she was little, she dreamed of growing up and being an artist, just like her dad. Making art and helping children create are her biggest passions and she can’t wait to work with the kids at this summer’s Art Camp!
Family Art Sunday: Spring Paper Projects
Sunday, April 3, 2022 at 2 p.m. | FREE
Join Svetlana Bardos for an afternoon of creativity and fun! Create an artwork yourself or collaboratively as a family!
Svetlana Bardos has always been passionate about visual arts and literature, and her primary interest is textile art. After the completion of the Textile Art Program at Capilano University, she got deeply interested in puppet design, fabric design and creating one-of-a kind pieces of clothing. She enjoys experimenting with unusual materials and combines them with hand printed materials and found objects.
Dandelion Planting Pop-up for Kids
Sunday, May 23, 2021 | FREE | Registration required
Take inspiration from Monique Martin’s exhibition Context is Everything and plant your very own dandelion to remind you of your strength and encourage you to keep growing! Families will be provided with a paper planting pot, soil, and their very own dandelion seed to take home, and watch grow.
In Context is Everything, Saskatoon-based artist Monique Martin exhibits thousands of realistic paper dandelions in a sprawling installation that carpets the gallery floor. They create an immersive environment that uses symbolism to inspire joy, hope, and optimism. Sometimes considered a weed, dandelions defy the order imposed around them; a golden infringement on a carefully manicured lawn, a cheerful intervention in a crack in the sidewalk, a silent protest against monoculture, disrupting the status quo. Martin’s dandelions are a hopeful symbol of resilience that encourage us to persevere.
Sessions will be 15 minutes long with staff cleaning surfaces after each workshop.
Family Art Sunday: Paper Butterflies
Sunday, May 30, 2021 | FREE | SOLD OUT
Join Svetlana Bardos in an afternoon creating paper butterflies inspired by Monique Martin’s exhibition Context is Everything. Interspersed among the dandelions in the exhibition are multicoloured silk screened butterflies, a symbol of metamorphosis in Martin’s work. She reminds us that throughout our lives, we too are in a constant process of transformation, and that tomorrow we will not be the same as we are today. In this workshop families will explore pattern, form, and material through paper craft and stamping!
Svetlana Bardos has always been passionate about visual arts and literature, and her primary interest is textile art. After the completion of the Textile Art Program at Capilano University, she got deeply interested in puppet design, fabric design and creating one-of-a kind pieces of clothing. She enjoys experimenting with unusual materials and combines them with hand printed materials and found objects.
Sessions will be 45 minutes long with staff cleaning surfaces after each workshop.
Kids’ Kits!
FREE, but donations greatly appreciated
Pick-up only, available while supplies last
We’ve put together free take-home art projects, so kids don’t have to leave empty handed when they visit Start with Art! These kits are filled with upcycled, unique materials to help inspire creative projects at home. Each kit contains a colourful sturdy surface to work on, to make sure it can handle any idea a young artist may have!
You’ll need a few materials from home – like glue, scissors, and perhaps some paint – but try to allow the materials in the kit to inspire you! If a material is fuzzy, or shiny, or rough, what kind of images and emotions do those textures make you think of?
Parents can send a photo to info(at)seymourartgallery.com if you would like to share finished projects. Natural light always helps to take great photos and we would love to see the artwork young artists are making!
Take your own hike
A guidebook for young artists of all ages
We collaborated with illustrator Graeme Zirk to create a fun self-directed workbook for young people called Take Your own Hike! Young artists can follow the art-making prompts and colour Graeme’s illustrations which unfold to a 16 x 20 poster! Follow the link below to order yours now and we’ll send it to you in the post.
Heart to Heart: When Poetry Meets Art
FREE Online Writing Workshop with Fran Bourassa
Friday, March 12, 7 p.m.
Have you ever wandered through an art gallery, found a work of art, and thought, “That looks like it should be a poem!” Creating poetry inspired by art is like having a conversation with the artists or the subject of the work. Art inspires art and you can be part of the exchange!
Join writer and poet Fran Bourassa online in this two-hour writing workshop! If you choose, she and group members will listen and give you feedback on the poems you have written inspired by the Seymour Art Gallery’s juried exhibition for new and emerging artists, Discovery. If you’re new to writing, don’t worry! All you need to do is follow the step by step process using the ‘Heart to Heart’ booklet. You can even choose to attend the workshop only to listen if you would like to participate but are not comfortable sharing. Let us know your preferences.
When you register you will receive a digital copy of the ‘Heart to Heart’ booklet, guidelines for the workshop, a guide for giving constructive feedback on poems, and a link to view the artwork online in case you can’t visit the Discovery exhibition before it ends on February 27, 2021.
2020
Read more about Subterranean Suburbia
Subterranean Suburbia Drawing Project
North Shore Art Crawl Workshop
Sunday March 8, 2020: 2 -4 p.m.
FREE | Materials provided | Appropriate for all ages | All children must be accompanied by an adult
Take inspiration from Amelia Butcher’s ceramic exhibition Sister Worm and create your own imaginary earthworm burrow using paper cut-outs and a variety of materials. Families are invited to collaborate and think creatively about the kind of home they might build they too lived in a subterranean world.
Amelia Butcher’s captivating solo exhibition uses curiosity, empathy, and labor to explore both the real and imagined lives of worms and other inhabitants of the soil. Immersing the viewer in a subterranean environment informed by rigorous research, literature, and humor, Sister Worm asks viewers to consider a more lateral relationship to natural systems, both seen and unseen. Butcher writes: “I don’t mean to see worms and soil as metaphors for human experiences; I really am interested in the worms themselves. Their experiences are not vessels for mine; our lives can rhyme with each other.”
Image credit: illustration by Kara Wightman
Read more about the Vision Board Workshop
Vision Board Workshop with Jamie Smith
For Seymour Art Gallery Members
Tuesday, February 11, 2020: 6 – 8 p.m.
FREE for Gallery Members | Materials provided | No experience required
In this workshop, Founder of THRIVE Art Studio Jamie Smith will guide participants through creating a collaged vision board to help them plan their goals and dream big. Participants will begin by completing a goal-setting worksheet and then use design principals such as balance, texture, and colour to create a visually appealing and inspiring vision board.
Jamie has created a vision board every year she has had her own business and feels that “a vision board creates space for a person to focus on what they want; which inevitably begins to expand with more focus. After creating a vision board and placing it in a space where it is seen often, it essentially becomes a tool for daily short visualization exercises. Visualization is one of the most powerful mind exercises and allows for change to be at the forefront of the mind, helping you achieve your goals.”
Jamie Smith creates mixed media work that layers her memories of traveling, family stories, and lost places. She began her artistic career by completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria and later receiving her Bachelor of Arts Education from the University of British Columbia. Her work is heavily influenced by her years abroad in Latin America, living in the Middle East and backpacking around Eastern Europe. Jamie finally settled in Vancouver in 2012 to focus on her art practice. In 2014, She started an annual community art walk in Mount Pleasant called ROVE that connects locals with the artists around them. Later in 2015 Jamie founded THRIVE, a studio to support female artists. Jamie lives, makes artwork and runs THRIVE in Mount Pleasant, British Columbia.
This workshop is open to gallery members only. Not already a member? Annual membership is only $25! Please call the gallery at 604-924-1378 to sign up or to check your membership status.
Read more about Write About Now
Write About Now
Letter Writing Workshop in a Digital Age
Sunday February 9, 2020: 2 – 4 p.m.
FREE| Materials provided | Appropriate for all ages
In this free drop-in workshop, participants will have the opportunity to write a card, note, or letter to a friend or loved one on stationary they have customized themselves.
Don’t know what to write? Take inspiration from artist and designer Mia Cinelli’s current exhibition This Being Said: an exhibition of new punctuation marks, letterforms, and symbols informed by facial expressions, gestures, and nonverbal communication.
Participants can choose to use Cinelli’s punctuation marks to enhance their letters; an ‘affecticon’ could be used to show closeness, while an ‘anticipation point’ could be used at the end of a sentence to express the writer’s excitement.
Mia Cinelli, Writing Guide(detail), 24 x 16 inches, digital print on matte polypropylene, 2019