Saint-Lambert Seniors Try Their Hands at Expressive Art Journals!

Expressive Art Journal Workshop

Back in early September, Préville artist and educator, Stephany Hernandez, visited the St-Lambert Public Library to deliver her “Expressive Art Journal Workshop” as part of the library’s Mornings for Retirees programming.

The goal of Stephany’s workshop is to help participants start a weekly art practice, in a sketchbook, in order to exercise their creativity and promote a sense of well-being through art making.

In total, 21 participants gathered with Stephany in the library’s Zia room, where they were each given their own personal kit that included an art journal and some special pens that they were able to take home afterwards.

Over the course of the two-hour workshop, participants used collage and other techniques to create the cover pages of their journals. They took inspiration from Hannah Höch’s artwork that Stephany shared with the group. Höch was an interwar avant-garde artist who worked with collage and photomontage.

All materials were provided by The Préville Fine Arts Centre, such as magazines, glue and paper of all sorts–notably vintage sheet music that had belonged to Préville founder, the late Belva Thomas, and was donated by her daughter and our current director, Veronica Thomas.

The workshop ended with Stephany encouraging participants to continue their new practice by keeping to a regular schedule of art making–committing time once a week or once per month to putting their imaginations to paper. Several participants were artists themselves who used the opportunity of the workshop to renew their commitment to a practice that had lost its momentum.