Showcasing two renowned and architecturally unique locations, The Contemporary Austin brings multidisciplinary exhibitions, engaging programs, and enticing special events to the city's visual arts landscape.
Nicole Eisenman: Sturm und Drang Upcoming at the Jones Center on Congress Avenue and Laguna Gloria February 27 – August 16, 2020.
The Contemporary Austin - Laguna Gloria is open in a limited capacity. Click here to learn more.
The Contemporary Austin offers diverse, engaging ways to explore contemporary art and culture, including innovative opportunities and experiences for families, young people, artists, and educators.
The acclaimed Art School at Laguna Gloria offers classes for ages four through adult in painting, drawing, ceramics, printmaking, photography, sculpture, digital media, and more. Register today for an online class!
Adults
Enjoy the brilliant colors of fast-drying acrylics and learn to build layers of textures and washes in landscape, still life, and abstract painting.
Shooting assignments focus on expanding composition skills, understanding light, and becoming comfortable and confident in manipulating manual exposure.
Ceramics studio time each week for 7 weeks! You may throw on the wheel, hand build...
Practice a new drawing medium in each session and enjoy drawing success from the very first class. Refine your technique in a supportive environment for beginners.
Learn about line, value, perspective, and composition as you begin to draw and then improve your skills through quick sketches and completed drawings...
Absolute beginners or those with rusty skills will discover, strengthen, and hone painting skills during an enjoyable weekend.
Discover, sharpen, and strengthen your skills to approach painting with confidence. Understand oil and acrylic paint and develop a foundation for future work.
Beginners or those with minimal experience learn different ways to start paintings, use paint as a wash or with texture, and practice old master techniques.
This 2 day workshop will cover basic paper folding techniques that will result in 4-5 books for you to take home.
Take your mosaics to the next level with this master class.
Develop basic design skills for artistic and commercial applications through a variety of student projects, lectures, and demonstrations.
Beginners are introduced to the watercolor medium while intermediate-level students advance technique and skills through practice and critiques...
Learn how the cubists saw and depicted the world and how the simultaneous discovery of the atom expanded their perception and affected their work.
Break away from traditional landscape painting and explore color, shape, and brushwork in a new class that explores the connection between landscape forms and abstract painting.
All levels are welcome in this information-packed class taught by a national award–winning children’s book author and illustrator.
Enjoy the tradition of painting "en plein air" as we observe the relationship between color and value in the landscape.
Learn complete manual control of a camera. While using a digital SLR is essential, you will subsequently be able to pick up any camera and make a manual exposure.
Perceive the world, with all its visual bombardment, the way that Robert Rauschenberg did and learn to use your own experiences to create highly original and dynamic art!
Age 4–5, Parent & Child
Enhance your child’s innate creativity! Young artists learn to think creatively and shape ideas into art they can see, touch, and know.
Children travel the world while learning about the art of other cultures. We’ll explore Hopi sculpture, Japanese origami, Australian Aboriginal painting, and ancient Egyptian masks.
Age 6–8
Venture into real and imaginary worlds with the stroke of a marker, the rub of charcoal, and the glide of pastels.
Create realistic paintings and express your artistic spirit in both bold and delicate colors using skillful brushstrokes.
Age 9–11
Hone your drawing skills and turn doodled creations into terrific cartoon characters!
Venture into real and imaginary worlds with the stroke of a marker, a piece of charcoal, and pastels while learning more advanced design and drawing skills.
Set up a palette, blend brilliant colors, and use different types of brushes. Create volume with light and make shadows in a still life, paint a landscape, and more..
This beginner class will focus on how to work with oil paint, acrylics, and watercolors.
Further develop basic skills in this perfect follow-up to the introduction to painting received in Painting I: Short Form.
Explore the fundamentals of relief printing through traditional printmaking tools and chine-collé.
Bird lovers! Learn to draw birds from your own photos or images from the internet. Teacher demos and handouts will help you observe and simplify...
Enhance drafting skills through drawing plant forms. Enjoy Laguna Gloria’s beautiful 14-acre site by sketching its flora in and out of the studio.
Add color to your repertoire by drawing with colored pencils. Explore layering, burnishing, and dissolving the waxy pencil to create luminous works of art.
Advance your drawing skills and further refine your technique by working with more challenging textures and more interesting still-life compositions.
Expand your visual acumen through study of the proportions, contours, volumes, and details of the head and face.
Absolute beginners use a variety of materials including charcoal and Conté crayon and employ basic principles of drawing while working from a live model.
Perfect your ability to render the human figure and expand upon basic drawing skills, through a variety of different nude models and lengths of poses.
Learn how to create abstract drawings using natural forms as inspiration.
Total beginners and experienced students: make vivid landscapes and cityscapes in a vacation sketchbook to enhance trip memories.
Enhance drafting skills through drawing plant forms while exploring the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Let's get out of the studio and experience nature!
Explore options, gain clarity on tools and techniques for both realistic and abstract styles, and learn practical skills and time-saving tips.
Conquer a variety of abstract painting techniques, including abstracting real objects, intuitive painting, and gestural works.
Join this finely tuned mixed media studio for those who wish to go deeper into the life and impact of the 2-D image.
Learn how to render botanical subjects in a realistic manner. Explore the work of the Dutch masters of still life, impressionist florals, and contemporary…
Learn practical skills necessary to accomplish accurate color mixing with oil or acrylic, plus explore the color wheel and simple color theory!
Learn a personal approach to figure painting with a grounding in canonical painters such as Matisse, Milton Avery, Picasso, de Kooning, and many more.
Learn the basics of color theory and some new mixed media painting techniques while exploring the geometries, beauty, and surprises found in nature.
Work from a live model or personal photographs to expand your skills through study of the proportions, contours, volumes, and details of the head and face.
We’ll review Stephen Quiller’s color theories and make our compositions more dynamic in whichever painting medium you choose.
Join us at our Friday open painting studio and work alongside your fellow painters at your own pace!
Beginners and those needing a refresher course alike will gain insight into the wonderful medium of watercolor during an enjoyable, challenging weekend.
This workshop-style class picks up where Watercolor Basics and Beyond leaves off, featuring new exercises and demos that focus on value, pattern, and color.
Explore composition, form, value, and color mixing through painting objects in a realistic style.
Students will leave with a series of spontaneous and unique watercolor paintings.
Learn how to approach portraiture in watercolor!
This part workshop, part self-paced drawing and painting lab is designed as a follow-up to our Children's Book Illustration course!
Learn to prepare blocks, draw, carve, and print while examining the history of relief printmaking with an emphasis on contemporary art.
Have you ever wanted to print your own T-shirts, posters, or cards? Master the fundamentals of screen printing so you can experiment confidently.
Adults, Ages 14-18
Customize your own “art bike” in this exciting workshop in collaboration with the Austin Yellow Bike Project!
Learn metal casting, used by sculptors for 7,000 years, through this introduction to foundry and mold-making practices.
Bring the heat in this exciting class that combines MIG and oxy-acetylene welding with forging.
Expand your skills, practice MIG (metal inert gas) welding techniques, and become more familiar with oxy-acetylene and hot form steel.
Design and build a steel sculpture with guidance from the instructor and improve welding skills by further understanding heat distortion, joint preparation, and machine settings.
Fabricate a wood and metal project as you familiarize yourself with material attributes, proper tool usage, and shop safety while learning the basics of welding and woodworking.
This class covers the fundamentals of fine woodworking and is perfect for those with no experience wanting to learn their way around the wood shop.
Beginner-to-intermediate woodworkers work on independent projects in an open studio format...
Beginners and experienced carvers alike will create through the interaction of dynamic shapes, lines, and volume and carve stone into abstract or figurative sculptures.
Using stoneware clay, gain a working knowledge of techniques such as slab construction, classic coil, pinched vessels, and throwing elemental wheel forms.
Beginners cover the basics of hand building and wheel throwing, while experienced students build on previous lessons, refine techniques, and create vessels.
Beginners will be introduced to basic shapes while experienced potters will expand skills and explore forms such as lidded jars and large objects.
Beginners and experienced students will enjoy this welcoming class. Learn the basics of centering, opening, and pulling clay on the potter’s wheel…
Explore inventive hand-building techniques for making functional pottery in this fun and informative class.
Learn how clay vessels have been built through history. Use basic forming techniques and add a personal touch to your work while exploring early clay forms.
Focus on surface and further skills in techniques including mishima and sgraffito. Learn to make underglaze decals and ceramic printing inks.
Focus on mastering basic hand-building skills and the use of slips, underglaze, and glaze to achieve a colorful palette with which to express yourself.
Explore and realize your own visions. Focus on narrative work employing human and animal forms, and develop and execute your own visual vocabulary.
Expand your understanding of stoneware or porcelain, under-glaze colors, and high-fire glazes.
Enjoy the creative pleasure of making functional pottery off the wheel! Create hand-built cups and tumblers by utilizing templates and thin clay slabs.
From understanding basic dipping and pouring to experimenting with fun and easy decorating techniques, students will learn to simplify glaze choices and gain versatility with a few favorites.
Take better photographs and learn the best techniques in the revolutionary photo editing program Adobe Lightroom CC.
Learn the basics and develop your editing skills to transform your photos into richer, more visually interesting images.
Learn to work portrait models in natural light as well as with a professional studio lighting setup, and learn the steps to properly light still life.
Explore the potential of the iPhone camera, including the best apps for creating artistic images and amazing examples of work by professional photographers.
Create beautiful and functional pieces using glass, marbles, stones, mirrors, dishes, and tiles in this class suitable for beginners.
Learn to create fundamental book structures: long-stitch and Coptic, a wrapped-strap book, and a hardcover journal or sketchbook.
Steef Crombach leads students in learning her variation on the traditional Indonesian batik method of wax-guarded dyeing, which she has spent years perfecting.
Do you love collecting and experimenting with all sorts of materials? Do you enjoy “mixing it up” with paper, fabric, metal, paint, trinkets, and mementos? Bring your stash and imagination and let’s create together.
Learn to use soft materials to create a 3-D shape from a 2-D plane with templates, filling, or air as you gain inspiration from the sculpture on the grounds of Laguna Gloria.
Learn the basics of making cloth on a loom. We will cover planning a project, choosing yarns, warping and setting up the loom, and weaving itself.
If you have some familiarity with weaving, this class will guide you through your own projects. Review materials and techniques, then tackle design and work independently.
Explore and learn how blocks work in weaving and unlock a whole universe of design possibilities.
This class meets in different locations, where students are challenged to create work from whatever is at hand, cobbling together serendipitous sculptures in situ.
Homeschool
Explore 3-D! Clay and other media are used to practice creating art in three dimensions while students learn about history’s notable sculptors.
Focus on art history of the 20th and 21st centuries while exploring formal elements and design principles and strengthening artistic skills.
Students will generate and conceptualize artistic ideas into 3-D forms while studying traditional and contemporary examples from art history.
Use a variety of mediums to take your artistic skills to a new level! Each class has a different theme: portraiture, still-life composition, figure drawing, capturing landscapes, and more.
Parent & Child
Design and decorate a large, beautiful platter perfect for use during the holidays!
Create Picasso-esque witches, monster pop-up cards, and skeleton sculptures in this imaginative class, inspired by Halloween.
Turn those doodled creations into terrific cartoon characters. Explore cartooning, craft your own cartoons, and practice lettering, perspective, timing, and expression.
Ages 12-14
Study drawing and painting, exploring form, color, perspective, texture, value, and composition using a realistic approach.
Ages 14-18
Advance your skills drawing the human form. Create drawings that incorporate movement, large structural relationships, proportions, and line.
Age 4–5, Age 6–8, Age 9–11, Ages 12-14
Spend winter break with us! Courses in various subject areas are offered for children ages 4-14.
Learn about contemporary painters who explore perception through color theory, geometric abstraction, minimalism, and Op art!
Hone your drawing skills as we explore the world of cartoons and comics!
Set up a palette, blend brilliant colors, and use different types of brushes. Create volume with light and shadow in a still life.
Bring a point-and-shoot camera or any device with a camera (iPhone/iPad) and learn to make your own movies from beginning to end.