Print multiple copies of your own holiday cards by drawing into sheets of styrofoam with a ballpoint pen to make a printing plate. Learn to print with multiple colors.

Bria Ansara is best known as a musician, performing her one-woman shows all over the island for over 15 years. Bria graduated from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire with a degree in Art Education. She was honored with The Art Educator of the Year award for her tenure as a student teacher in 2006. In addition to studying Art Ed, Bria majored in Printmaking, where she honed her skills in fine line drawing and mastered the art of intaglio and drypoint plate printmaking.

Bria still makes great use of her degree in teaching as the coordinator and lead teacher of Schools at The Studios, a program she developed with The Studios Executive Director Jed Dodds. The program transforms our galleries into living classrooms as elementary and middle school students not only visit the exhibitions, but meet the artists who made them possible! Bria designs custom lesson plans for each visit, meeting with our exhibiting and resident artists, and ending with hands on activities to build skills and deepen their understanding.

In this fun (not-like-school!) creative writing workshop, kids will have the opportunity to unleash their imaginations and get creative with words.

B. Lucy Stevens is an award-winning writer, a teacher, editor and artist. Her fiction and journalism has been published in numerous literary journals, magazines and newspapers. Lucy also paints intuitively and her work is vibrant and expressionistic, daily life imagined in a brilliant cacophony of color and pattern with deeply affecting results.

Learn to use photographs as inspiration and reference for making a finished abstract painting. Using limited color palettes, students would learn to simplify shapes and colors to create an abstracted piece from 1 or more photo references. The aim is not to feel limited by re-creating the photo, but to learn to see beyond what is in the photo and take off from there into their own creative journey.

Hodelin thinks of his work as modern seen through the eyes of a traditionalist. He experiments with classical forms and themes through contemporary abstraction, presented in an honest way to evoke shared experiences.

Jack McDonald returns for a second season with humor and skill and dedication to art as he teaches how to compose and finish a successful painting by the end of each class. Leave each class with an appreciation for talents you didn’t know you had.

As a visual artist and proud Key West native, the island landscape has always been Jack McDonald’s muse. He’s also had the pleasure of working with some of the local greats like Rick Worth and John Martini. Primarily interested in street art, Jack is influenced by local color as well as art in public places. He is driven to stretch the boundaries of “street art,” with the hope to raise awareness and establish it as a more legitimate art form. (And, of course, while having a bit of fun!) Through the use of whimsical illustrations, brights colors and shapes, his desire is to have a positive influence on the Key West art scene, while adding an element of familiarity, exploration, and discovery.

Jack McDonald returns for a second season with humor and skill and dedication to art as he teaches how to compose and finish a successful painting by the end of each class. Leave each class with an appreciation for talents you didn’t know you had.

As a visual artist and proud Key West native, the island landscape has always been Jack McDonald’s muse. He’s also had the pleasure of working with some of the local greats like Rick Worth and John Martini. Primarily interested in street art, Jack is influenced by local color as well as art in public places. He is driven to stretch the boundaries of “street art,” with the hope to raise awareness and establish it as a more legitimate art form. (And, of course, while having a bit of fun!) Through the use of whimsical illustrations, brights colors and shapes, his desire is to have a positive influence on the Key West art scene, while adding an element of familiarity, exploration, and discovery.

Learn the fundamental principles of linocut printing and discover how to transfer the designs onto fabric.

Kota is an artist based in Milwaukee, WI and currently working as a production ceramists and illustrator. Their work ranges from functional dinnerware, ceramic sculpture, graphic design, to comic illustration. While embracing the moods of different mediums they often reason with the feelings, form, texture, and likely a nostalgic story they’ve made up. BFA Print & Narrative Forms, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Ruley leads participants through the process of painting a likeness of their favorite animal. At the conclusion of the class, everyone will have a piece that captures the unique character that makes your pet who they are.

Maggie Ruley moved to Key West in 1985 after receiving her BFA from the University of Arizona. Her first studio in Key West was on the corner of Thomas and Petronia Streets in the building where Blue Heaven restaurant is now. She has ​ created a body of work that incorporates the tropical motifs and colors found in Key West’s island life style. The exploration of these themes continuously inspires her. She currently works and teaches classes from her studio and gallery space on Fleming Street called Island Inspirations.

Learn from veteran writer and director how to develop your television series from concept to finished show.

Born in 1987, in Vienna, Austria, Ernest is a successful writer and director, who has worked in the United States and Austrian film industries for 15 years, specializing in creating outstanding genre movies & television shows. His work includes character-driven dramas, heartfelt comedies, as well as stunt and special effect action films. Ernest is the creator and writer of the first ever Austrian Amazon series “Beasts Like Us”, released in 2024. He’s the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, and alum of the prestigious NYU Tisch – School of the Arts & Filmacademy Vienna.

Have fun writing poetry from prompts that push beyond usual habits and methods.

Eric Pankey, who received his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1983, is the author of many collections of poems: For the New Year (Atheneum 1984), which was selected as the winner of the Walt Whitman Award by Mark Strand, Heartwood (Atheneum 1988), which was reissued by Orchises Press in 1998, Apocrypha (Alfred A. Knopf 1991), The Late Romances (Alfred A. Knopf 1997), Cenotaph (Alfred A. Knopf 2000), Oracle Figures (Ausable Press 2003), Reliquaries (Ausable Press 2005), The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems (Ausable Press 2008), Trace (Milkweed Editions 2013), Dismantling the Angel (Free Verse Editions 2013), which won the New Measures Prize, Crow-Work (Milkweed Editions 2015), Augury (Milkweed Editions 2017), Owl of Minerva (Milkweed Editions 2019), Alias: Prose Poems (Free Verse Editions 2020), Not Yet Transfigured (Orison Books 2021), The History of the Siege (Codhill Press 2024). A collection of essays, Vestiges: Notes, Responses, & Essays 1988-2018 appeared from Parlor Press in 2019. He teaches poetry workshops and courses on modern and contemporary poetry. He is Professor of English and the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University. He lives with his wife, the poet Jennifer Atkinson, in Fairfax, Virginia.