Fine Arts Center

First Friday Art Party
2024-01-05 17:00 - 20:00 (America/Denver) | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join us for our First Friday celebration from 5–8 p.m. Enjoy the stunning ambiance offered by the FAC’s chic, historic venue.

FREE museum admission
Art in Deco Lounge by John Odlin
Music by Bryant Jones
Drinks and snacks available for purchase
FREE downtown shuttle, THE ZEB, running along Tejon Street to downtown art galleries

About Bryant Jones
Bryant Jones has been playing keyboards for more than 50 years. It’s the connective thread through a life of changes. He started in the late Sixties playing a keyboard his father bought for his 14th birthday. One year later, on his 15th birthday, life took an unconscionable, unalterable turn. Coming up on his 65th birthday this month, Bryant sat down with Humanitou. He shares how he came to live and play improvisationally, about his musical influences and a day working alongside one of them. He talks about being rescued from a mental hospital by a cousin, embracing the love and peace of the counterculture, and playing his way (almost) to the top of Pikes Peak.

After Hours at the FAC with Gray Duck Productions
2024-01-12 19:30 - 22:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join us for a set of two bands—Broth and Hoopla—performing in Taste Restaurant. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and performances start at 8 p.m. The bar in Deco Lounge will be open until 10 p.m.
Free and open to the public. Donations to support FAC programs are greatly appreciated.

Family Adventure Day
2024-01-13 10:00 - 13:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Pop in between 10 a.m–1 p.m. to check out what the Fine Arts Center has to offer and explore your creativity in drawing, painting, and sculpture! Family Adventure Day will offer a variety of hands-on art projects in the Bemis School of Art studio classrooms, along with artist demonstrations and interactive, self-guided activities. Bemis instructors will help guide you to awaken your art-making skills or show you new possibilities in art making. And while you are here, make sure to check out Museum Free Day. Museum Free Days are just that, an opportunity for the public to enjoy our galleries free of charge.
This is event is free and all ages and skill levels are welcome! Donations are welcome.
Members get early access at 9:30 a.m.! Not a member? Join today for as little at $5 a month!

Museum Free Day
2023-05-13 10:00 - 17:00, 2023-05-19 10:00 - 20:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Museum Free Days are offered the second Saturday and third Friday of each month. See what’s on view in the museum

What’s in a Frame?
2024-01-19 13:00 - 16:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join the museum collections team in the Agents of Care gallery from 1–4 p.m. to explore some of the frames used by the museum, from historic to modern, simple to ornate. Museum staff will discuss the various components of a frame and how they work together to protect and preserve art while on display and in storage. This is a drop-in program that is free and open to the public.

Crafts + Cocktails: Macrame Photo Hanger
2024-01-19 17:30 - 19:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
This event is sold out.
A fun-filled evening of crafting and cocktails awaits! We’ll be diving into the art of macrame, where you’ll learn to knot and weave a macrame photo hanger, a perfect gift for Valentine’s Day, which is just around the corner. No prior experience is necessary—our expert instructor Megan Dulin will guide you through the process step-by-step. You can bring your own small photo to customize the size of the hanger.
And as you work on your masterpiece, you can purchase a delicious drink to sip on while you craft. Space is limited, so bring your friends or come solo. Either way you’ll have a fantastic time socializing and creating something beautiful!
FAC Members: $20
General admission: $30
Drinks available for purchase. Credit card only. Bar will open at 5 p.m.

Bemis School of Art Winter/Spring Session
2024-01-22 - 2024-04-19 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Whatever your artistic interest and whatever your age or skill level, we have classes to drive your passions at the Fine Arts Center’s Bemis School of Art. Explore!
Browse classes

Pottery with Personality
2024-01-22 09:00 - 11:30 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join this class to create whimsical, functional, and decorative items that will bring joy to your home or garden. We will learn and improvise on basic handbuilding skills to create shapes, eyes, and other expressive features to bring personality to our mugs, bowls, garden sculptures, and more. In this class, you will explore various glazing techniques and finishes to make your creations come alive.
Level A – All levels welcome.
Ages 16–Adult

Introduction to Pastel Techniques
2024-01-22 13:00 - 15:00 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
This course is aimed toward beginners but creatives working in other mediums who want to learn something new about this frequently overlooked art form. Through demonstration and hands-on creating, students will learn the variety in which pastels, papers, and tools combine to create the most colorful artworks imaginable.
Level 0 – This class is for the true beginner with no prior experience in the medium.
Adults

Realistic Animal Portraits
2024-01-25 18:00 - 19:30 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Do you have a favorite pet? Is the zoo your favorite place to visit? In this class you will learn multiple techniques to bring those furry friends to life! We will explore the grid scale technique to help you confidently draw complex shapes more simply. We will then practice skills to explore the charcoal medium and other tools that help achieve the unique characteristics of your individual animals.
Level A – All levels welcome.
Ages 16–Adult

Slip Casting and Mold Making
2024-01-25 18:30 - 21:00 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
You will explore the process of creating multiples of a single clay object through foundational techniques in clay slip casting and plaster mold-making. You will have an opportunity to create your own object from clay and will learn to mix and pour plaster to fabricate a functional and reusable one-part mold. We will spend ample time learning to pour our own porcelain clay slip castings using plaster molds, as well as introductory techniques for how to glaze porcelain castings. There is a material fee of $22 due to the instructor on the first day of class.
Level 0 – This class is for the true beginner with no prior experience in the medium.
Ages 16–Adult

A Celebration of Diné Textiles with Melissa Cody
2024-01-26 17:00 - 19:30 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
The Fine Arts Center recently received a generous gift of 19th and early 20th century textiles by Diné weavers. Help us welcome these remarkable works into our care. View a selection of textiles in the Agents of Care gallery and enjoy a reading by CC Professor of English Natanya Ann Pulley and a talk by visiting artist Melissa Cody, a fourth-generation Navajo weaver, who will reflect on these textiles as well as her current works.
This event is free and open to the public.
RSVPs are requested
About Melissa Cody
Born 1983 in Arizona, Melissa S. Cody is a member of the Navajo Nation. In 2005, she received a Bachelor’s degree in Museum Studies and AFA in Studio Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A fourth-generation Navajo weaver, Cody’s intricate tapestries are often associated with the weaving style that distinguish a complex interaction of the traditional and historical Germantown Revival. This stylistic movement is named after the government wool from Germantown, Pennsylvania that was rationed to the Navajo during the time of the Long Walk. Traditional vegetal dyes were supplemented with the commercially dyed wool, prompting new economic pressures for the Navajo to enterprise and adapt on. This created new bold textiles, with a commercial viability that meant the practice could continue and thrive despite the alterations.
Cody’s work is a balance of tradition, history and the contemporary. Working on a traditional Navajo loom, Cody fuses classical patterns into intricate geometric overlays and tantalizing colorways. She transforms motifs of bright Germantown wools into dreamscapes where deeper connections and hourglass spiders can roam. The viewer’s eyes travel through spinning whirling logs and encapsulated squares of 2 and 3-ply wool, creating various forms of (mis)direction and subversion. Cody is creating and redefining the tactile surface, establishing the limitless nature of her storytelling through warp and weft.
Melissa Cody’s work has been featured in many museums and galleries, such as: the Stark Museum of Art (2014, Orange, Texas); Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Institute of American Indian Arts (2017–2018, Santa Fe); Ingham Chapman Gallery, University of New Mexico (2018, Albuquerque); Navajo Nation Museum (2018); SITE (2018–2019, Santa Fe); MASS Gallery (2019, Austin); Heard Museum (2019, Phoenix); Exploratorium (2019, San Francisco); Museum of Northern Arizona (2019, Flagstaff); National Gallery of Canada (2019–2020, Ottawa), Art Basel Miami (2019,2021, Miami) Museum of Art of São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (2023, Brazil), and PS1 MOMA (2024, NYC).Her works are featured in a number of museum collections, including those of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Autry Museum of the American West, and the Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas.
About Natanya Ann Pulley
Natanya Ann Pulley is a Diné writer (Kinyaa’áani and Táchii’nii clans). She’s published in McSweeney’s, Phantom Drift, Split Lip, and The Massachusetts Review (et al). Her essays have been anthologized most recently in Shapes of Native Nonfiction, The Diné Reader, and Unbound: Composing Home. She is a 2022 recipient of a NEA fellowship in Creative Writing. Her short story collection With Teeth (New Rivers Press) is the winner of the 2018 Many Voices Project competition.
Natanya is the founding editor of Hairstreak Butterfly Review and currently editing an anthology of Flash Fiction by Native American writers and a Dińe Writers on Craft issue of HBR. Her recent writing projects include a creative nonfiction collection (The First Narcissism), a novel reimagining Peter Pan, and Gapp’s Basement (an experimental novel-in-stories). Natanya is an associate professor of English at Colorado College. She teaches texts by Native American writers, fiction writing, and experimental forms.
This generous gift was provided by the Paula Ryan and Family Collection.
Top image: Attributed to Hastin Deet-si Be Ahd (Diné), Rug, c. 1911, Wool, aniline dyes, Gift of the Paula Ryan and Family Collection (detail)

Classic Calligraphy
2024-01-27 09:30 - 11:30 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
In this two-hour class, you’ll develop skills using an edged pen for calligraphy. You’ll learn to write in Italic calligraphy, along with an introduction to other historic book hands. We’ll harness a combination of design awareness, craft skills, and rhythmic vitality to create beautiful writing.
Level A – All levels welcome.
Adults

Intro to Natural Dyes
2024-01-27 10:00 - 16:30 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join us for this class using natural dyes where you will get an introduction to the fundamentals of using natural plants and natural plant extracts to color fabric. We will explore how different types of fabrics are mordanted and how different weaves take the dye, and you will walk away with the beginnings of a color sample binder. We will take a 30-minute break during the day for lunch so be sure to pack yourself a sack lunch. There is a material fee of $65 due to the instructor on the first day of class.
Level A – All levels welcome.
Ages 16–Adult

FAC Member Tour: Clarence Shivers: Experimenting with Form
2024-02-02 16:00 - 17:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
This event is at capacity. Please email fac@coloradocollege.edu or call (719) 634-5581 to be placed on the waitlist.
Join Michael Christiano, Director of Visual Arts & Museum, for a tour of the exhibition Clarence Shivers: Experimenting with Form. Over the course of his career, Clarence Shivers (1923-2007) demonstrated a commitment to artistic experimentation, working across different media—both two- and three-dimensional—and cultivating a range of stylistic approaches. Explore the artist’s wide variety of work from representational portraits to abstracted landscapes and more.
Make a night of it! Stick around after the tour for our First Friday Art Party.

First Friday Art Party
2024-02-02 17:00 - 20:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join us for our First Friday celebration from 5–8 p.m. Enjoy the stunning ambiance offered by the FAC’s chic, historic venue.

FREE museum admission, including to the newest museum exhibition Clarence Shivers: Experimenting with Form
Art in Deco Lounge by Bruce Nall
Music by Tidal Breeze Creos Jazz Trio
Drinks and snacks available for purchase
FREE downtown shuttle, THE ZEB, running along Tejon Street to downtown art galleries

About Tidal Breeze Creos Jazz Trio
The Tidal Breeze Creos Jazz Trio brings Creative Energy to jazz and Latin jazz, while also playing new compositions and a wide variety funk, blues, swing, and New Orleans styles. The Tidal Breeze Creos Trio features Terri Pederson on trumpet, Tony Szajowski on keyboard, and Pat Abbot on bass.
Terri Pederson is a Trumpet / Flugelhorn player who leads Tidal Breeze Jazz Arts and the Creos Jazz Trio. Terri has performed with singer Ernestine Anderson, singer / entertainer Clint Holmes, and jazz greats Bill Watrous and Phil Urso. Terri’s recent composition “Ode to the Emergency Room” can be heard on YouTube and Spotify and features Pat Abbott on a killer electric bass solo.
Keyboardist Tony Szajowski has appeared at The Taste of Chicago and has shared the bill with artists such as Willie Nelson, Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood, Dumpstaphunk, Forq, Method Man & Red Man, Dark Star Orchestra, and Umphrey’s McGee. Since moving to Colorado Springs in 2018, he plays with many of the top artists and groups in Denver and Colorado Springs.
Bassist Pat Abbott is an Orchestra Director in the public school system as well as a college level Adjunct Professor of Jazz Studies. Pat has performed with legendary jazz masters Bill Watrous, Paul Smoker, and Phil Haynes and is very in demand throughout the region.
Creos: from the Latin “Creo”, to make or create

Clarence Shivers: Experimenting with Form Opening Celebration
2024-02-09 18:00 - 20:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join us for the opening of the museum’s newest exhibition Clarence Shivers: Experimenting with Form and celebrate this prolific artist’s wide-ranging and exceptionally creative career. Enjoy live music by Tidal Breeze, food, and chat with friends and family of the artist. This event is free and open to the public; RSVPs are requested.
Please RSVP
