Bad Art Night at the Library

This past Tuesday was our first ever BAD ART NIGHT at the library! We had a LOT of interest in this program, and I don’t know if everyone was prepared to have as much fun as we did!

The whole idea around Bad Art is to allow adults who want to be creative, to give themselves permission to make things that are imperfect. In this world of Pinterest and Etsy, we’re bombarded by perfect photos of things that people have made. It isn’t something all of us can do. So, Bad Art Night was the antidote.

After explaining the concept–that we wanted participants to create something ugly on purpose–we got down to work with a simple ice-breaker.  We drew ourselves.  But it wasn’t as simple as picking up a pencil and sketching out our features. I wanted to make sure any “hidden” talents wouldn’t surface just yet. So, we used paper plates perched atop our heads, and we drew without being able to see exactly what we were drawing. The results? Hilarious!

Then, we got down to the concept of Folk Art, along with examples from an extensive collection to let these budding creative-types understand the difference between art created for sale, and art created out of love.

In the end, we worked on ugly creatures, some of which you’ll see displayed in our library soon. I think they turned out very…well, bad! Participants were encouraged to Instagram or Facebook their experiences throughout the session, and I must say, some of the photos I found later were quite creative.

Hopefully, this won’t be the only Bad Art Night we’ll have. I think it was a great success failure!

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