Welcome to The Bad Newsletter

The Bad Newsletter is a recap of Bad Art Club + Upcoming Opportunities + Resources.

Workspace of a BAC participant with her works-in-progress

This newsletter is 672 words, a 3-minute read.

We had our first (sold out!) meeting of Bad Art Club, and it was great :)

Register for our next meeting, on March 11, at bit.ly/badartclub.

Thank you to everyone who attended, spread the word, and sent encouraging messages.

The Recap in 5

1. Why “Bad” Art?

• Framing art as bad sets the bar low for yourself and others. It allows you to create with less concern about how you or others will appraise it.

• It’s an acknowledgment that our work will not neatly fit into “fine art”. I see us as part of the future of folk art. Folk art is learned by watching, uses self-taught skills, and is passed down knowledge. Folk art is a major art form in the South.

• A tongue-in-cheek critique of the gatekeeping of major art institutions, as we create a new path that resists this. I don’t actually think our art is bad :)

2. Guest Artist: TJ Mundy, EAM Artist in Residence

TJ shared their artistic process, took us on a tour of their studio, and taught us about intuitive color choices and linework.

TJ’s completed art piece from BAC

Follow their work on Instagram, via their Website, or connect on LinkedIn.

3. Skills & Activities

We started with finger painting while exploring color theory.

Image linked to a “Color Theory” page by Interaction Design Foundation

Then, we moved to mark-making and linework.

A page from my art journal about marks I like

Finally, we finished our pieces for the day and added elements of collage.

A member of the class working on her collage elements.

4. What Now?

What do you do once you complete your art?

• Put it on your fridge or wall

• Give it to someone or donate it

• Cut it up, rip it up, throw it away

• Keep working on it

• Submit it to a show (Loner Mag is accepting submissions now, free to submit!)

You control what you do with your art.

Oh yeah, we all got stickers and pins at the end :)

5. Upcoming

• Next BAC is Saturday, March 11 from 2-5 pm at Eno Arts Mill. Register at bit.ly/badartclub.

• Our March guest artist is Ezra Croft; known for creating the Nicolas Cage Art Show, subsequent Bill Murray Art Show and Bill Murray Art Book, and Breast-themed Art Show. He is a lover of strange, beautiful things who has gone viral several times over.

Quote from Ezra Croft

• We will focus on drawing and still life at our March meeting. Here is a sneak peek of our still life subjects <3

Peace, the Bear

3 Opportunities

1. Applications are open for School of the Alternative this summer in Black Mountain, NC. This is a weeklong experimental art school. Feel free to share!

   

2. Start following Arts Access Inc! This is an amazing NC organization that increases arts access for people with disabilities. They have my favorite arts newsletter, sign up to learn more about accessibility in the arts.

3. Must see in-person: “This is Not: Aldwyth in Retrospective” at the Gregg Museum in Raleigh.

   “Now in her mid-eighties, the artist Aldwyth has lived and worked alone in an octagonal house overlooking a salt marsh on one of South Carolina’s sea islands since 1980. For most of her life, she maintained her seclusion from the larger art world while utilizing the history of art as a catalyst for complex found-object sculptures and epic-scaled collages”

   My favorite piece? Her resume (below).

One checkmark over the word “work”.

One thing I’m doing

I finished a 6-week Creative Writing course with Emory University’s Continuing Education. It was a great experience as my first writing class and I ended up writing a 1,500-word essay about rural magic and sci-fi as my final piece. I signed up to take Surrealist Writing next!