Josephine ‘Josie’ Dakers-Brathwaite teaches needle felting to students during the free art workshops at Manufacturers Village.
Manufacturers Village, a non-profit community in East Orange, recently held free art workshops for youth aged 10 to 15.
The two-day workshop provided East Orange youth opportunities to explore their artistic talents, develop new skills, and express themselves creatively in a supportive arts environment.
Classes were taught by professional teachers/artists in their studios with assistance from college art students.
The students were able to choose from four workshops: A Painting Workshop with teaching artist Mona Brody, assisted by Adelin Figueroa; Sculpture, Intro to 3D Printing with teaching artist Luke Mogen, assisted by Belmira Silva; Drawing Workshop with teaching artist Alexandra Schoenberg, assisted by Bonney Donachie; and Fiber Arts: Sculpting with Fiber (Needle Felting) with teaching artists Josephine “Josie” Dakers-Brathwaite, assisted by Hazel Moran.
The workshops were coordinated by Cynthia Vaughn, with assistance from Rose Powell.
“We wanted to create various endeavors, and we had ideas we thought were important,” said Brody, who is on the Board of Manufacturers Village Artists non-profit. She explained that the artists raised money to put the workshops together by selling their art in an auction. They made $7,500.
All art supplies were included in the free workshops.
The Summer Art Workshops were Manufacturers Village’s very first program as a non-profit. “We wanted to do something to give back to the community,” said Brody. “It’s a good place. It’s a lot of fun.”
She taught the class how to develop their ideas and use acrylic medium to freely express their unique style.
As her class was getting ready to begin, she told them, “We are really excited you’re here and we can all work together. This is a class we can all explore.
Dakers-Brathwaite is a fiber artist specializing in textiles, felt, dollmaking, and quilt art. She was teaching her class the art of needle sculpting using fiber and a barbed needle. They were making penguins, cats, and flowers.
“Be creative,” she said to the class. “It doesn’t have to look like mine. At the end of the day, this belongs to you. You can use your imagination.”
Mogen was teaching the 3D Printing class for the first time. He had just graduated from Ontario College of Art and Design, where his thesis was on 3D Printing. In his class a 3D scanner was utilized to creatively capture the essence of a subject through various filters, allowing the image to appear in three dimensions.
He said it would take the class two to three hours to create the image and get it printed on the machine.
Alexandra Schoenberg pursued architecture studies at Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, graduating in 1986. She taught her class that perspective is the depiction of three dimensions—objects with height, width, and depth—on a flat surface of paper, canvas, or screen. Her class was drawing in one point perspective and two-point perspective.
“They’re doing fabulous,” she said about her class.
To learn more about Manufacturers Village Artists, visit: https://www.manufacturersvillageartists.org/.
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