Are you looking for a visiting artist to teach at your program? I offer customized art residencies and classes for schools, community centers, and camps. Areas of focus include drawing, painting, photography, book arts, murals, creative writing and mixed media. Sample course ideas are highlighted below. I can custom design classes for your group based on students' areas of interest and skill levels. Contact me for more information and rates at 503.347.1391 or at Lisa@LisaKaganDesigns.com.
Explore the world of your imagination through line and color! Draw your portrait in ten years, paint the tree outside your window, design your dream house...Develop skills with pen & ink, charcoal, colored pencils, oil pastels and acrylic paint while learning composition, perspective, shading and color mixing.
Create your own illustrated family history book! You will learn how to combine writing, reproductions of your old family photographs and painting illustrations to explore your family's stories, traditions and culture. Your completed book is a wonderful way to honor your ancestors and share the wisdom and experiences of the past with future generations. Click here to learn more.
How can you help make your community a better place? What does peace look like to you? What does freedom mean? You will have the opportunity to explore these important questions and more through drawing, writing and collage. We will discuss how art is a powerful tool for communicating ideas and will work together to create an exhibition for the school (or a mural upon school request) that inspires innovation in thought and action.
Are you brilliant like the sun, do you bloom colorfully like a springtime flower, do you sing like the wind? You will have the opportunity to sculpt a plaster mask of your own face and decorate it in the spirit of natural elements that represent important qualities about who you are. The completed masks can be a basis for the creation of a student story telling or theater performance. Throughout the class students will learn more about the importance of mask making from around the world and the roles masks play in different cultures and traditions.
Have you ever wanted to make a painting come to life? Merging painting, drawing, photo collage, creative writing and plaster sculpture you will have the opportunity to create your own large scale multimedia portraits.
Is there a place in your school or community that could use your help? This class combines service learning, community clean up and recycled art. Students will chose a site for a community clean up project and then will reuse the ‘trash’ materials they have collected to make a piece of art sharing their experience with the community and bringing awareness to the importance of the issue.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a 500 year old Douglas Fir tree, or a tiny caterpillar in the grass? You will challenge yourself to see from different perspectives while exploring the ecology of place. Creative writing, drawing, painting and collage skills will be developed into a collaborative mural.
Grow! Discover! Create! Explore form in nature, celebrate the cycles of the seasons, and develop your own ecosystem. We will focus on cultivating observation skills, drawing from life, and print making with natural materials. This class will utilize multimedia exploration to enhance our understanding and appreciation of the natural world and how we can work together to preserve it.
Create a new animal species, design a machine that can change the world, or give an ordinary object extraordinary power. Design and build a model house featuring your own innovative ideas while you learn about appropriate technology and building with recycled materials. This class focuses on using your drawing and sculpture skills to bring your inventive ideas to life.
Draw the face of your favorite endangered animal, envision their home in the jungle, and paint the berries and nuts they eat. This class will utilize multimedia exploration to learn about endangered animal habitats and how we can work together to preserve our natural world and all of its creatures.
Have you always wanted to travel to distant lands, wondered what it would be like to journey to the moon, or be transported back in time? In this class you will learn how to combine painting and photography to create images exploring those places you have always dreamed of visiting.
Residency Highlights 
