Fine Arts Center

Virtual: Beginning Acrylic Painting
2021-06-07 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Denver) | Virtual
This introduction to acrylic painting is a fun way to breathe new life into your paintings! Learn fundamental techniques of drawing in different mediums. Discover different painting techniques such as wet on wet and dry brush processes, color mixing, layering, and so much more. This virtual course includes live Zoom class sessions and live Zoom studio hours. Supply list online. Youth course ages 12-16.
Instructor: Jantzen Peake

Virtual: Military Artistic Healing
2021-06-15 17:30 - 19:00 | Virtual
Discover techniques to inspire creative skills and gain greater self-awareness. Explore artistic possibilities, develop your creativity, and gain personal insight through working with a variety of controllable mediums. This course includes live Zoom class sessions. Supply list online. Adult Please note, this class is only open to active duty military and veterans. An active duty, retiree ID, or DD-214 must be presented in order to participate.
Instructor: Kim Nguyen

Summer Music Festival: Outdoor Festival Celebration
2021-06-15 19:00 - 20:00 | Monument Valley Park, 170 W Cache La Poudre St, Colorado Springs, 80903, United States
Featuring the CC Summer Music Festival Orchestra with works by Copland, Prokofiev, and Beethoven.
Free and open to all!
With very special guests The Reminders
A rare and remarkable musical duo with undeniable magical chemistry, The Reminders transcend the bounds of expectation to uplift and entertain. They seamlessly blend razor sharp rhythms and raw, soulful vocals with reggae-tinged hip-hop beats to highlight their relevant and inspiring messages. The couple shares a partnership in both music and life as Samir and Aja have been married for over a decade.
The Reminders have been recognized and applauded for their work internationally through concerts, tours, music awards, TV and radio appearances. Having shared the stage with artists such as Snoop Dogg, Nas, Big Boi, and touring with Ms. Lauryn Hill.
More information about the Summer Music Festival

Virtual: Dena’s Art Dialogues
2021-06-18 10:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
Prerequisite: Completion of at least one previous course offered by Dena Peterson.
If you are a previous student of Dena Peterson’s, you are invited to meet with her and other past students for an in-depth discussion of a variety of topics related to painting. Explore different themes each month based on students’ interests. Together, the class will investigate a wide variety of art, engage in lively discussion, and navigate new ideas. In addition to dynamic discussions, this course features live demonstrations and painting critiques. This will be a safe and fun group in which to grow as an artist! This course includes live Zoom class sessions. Adult class.
Instructor: Dena Peterson

City as a Venue: Front Range Fables
2021-06-26 10:00 - 14:00 | CO
Three fantastical fairy tales based on historic events in the Pike’s Peak region, to entertain, educate, and foster empathy. By filtering these stories through the lens of Fairy Tale and Fable, we invite students to experience history in a very approachable manner. These plays are written by three local playwrights and will be cast with 15 local actors. Each play will be performed 3 times allowing for many families to socially distance view the productions in each location. June 26 FAC Outdoor Stage | July 3 | Hillside Community Center | July 10 | Meadows Park | July 17 | Acacia Park Bandshell | July 24 | Deerfield Hills Community Center | Aug. 7 | Concrete Coyote
Pre-registration encouraged

City as a Venue: Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado presents JQA
2021-07-03 14:00 - 20:30 | CO
Saturdays in the Park with the FAC: join us for live performances and art demonstrations downtown at Acacia Park!
FREE – pre-registration recommended | Acacia Park Bandshell
JQA
by Aaron Posner
This country isn’t gonna get more perfect on its own.
John Quincy Adams was a brilliant but quick-tempered diplomat, one-term president, and congressman. In “JQA,” award-winning playwright Aaron Posner (“Stupid F**king Bird,” “Cyrano”) imagines conversations between Adams and extraordinary Americans like George Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Abigail Adams. In this performance from Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado, four Colorado actors chart John Quincy Adam’s 70-year journey from mischievous child to reluctant diplomat to abolition advocate. Provocative, haunting, and hilarious, this play challenges the ways we think about our country, our government, and ourselves.
“In Aaron Posner’s play, there is more than one John Quincy Adams, but only one way to ensure that American democracy endures.” —The New York Times
“Even if one isn’t a history buff, JQA is a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece of theatre, exploring the responsibility we owe to both our loved ones and our country.” —Broadway World
Content advisory: This production contains conversations about and depictions of American slavery. This production includes some mildly explicit language.
Register for 2 p.m. performance
Register for 7 p.m. performance

Virtual: Fundamentals of Digital Photography
2021-07-07 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual
In this beginning photography course, you’ll learn the basic functions of your camera, including how to bring together the elements of manual mode to create intriguing images using shutter speed, aperture, and ISO for different lighting situations. We will cover classic compositional approaches and how to use them to express your creative vision. An introduction to digital processing will round out the course to maximize the potential of your images. This virtual course includes live Zoom sessions. Supply list online. Ages 16–Adult
Instructor: Michelle Mondragon

A Conversation with Cheech Marin
2021-07-07 16:30 - 17:30 | Virtual

Plates, Platters, & Tumblers
2021-07-08 09:30 - 12:00 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Working from templates, we will handbuild and decorate a plate and tumbler. Slab rolled clay will be transformed into functional ware that is fun and useful! After your pieces have been fired once, they will be decorated with underglaze decals to reflect your own personal artistic statement. Colors, patterns, and designs
are determined by each individual. Join the fun, learn a new decorating technique, and make some clay art! There is a $5 material fee per person payable to the instructor for underglazes on the first day of class. Supply list online. Maximum number of students from the same household: 5. Ages 16-Adult
Instructor: Maggie Quinn

City as a Venue: EPIC Concert & The World of Us film screening
2021-07-10 18:00 - 22:30 | CO
Saturdays in the Park with the FAC
A double feature of music and film screening of The World of Us for the whole family
FREE – pre-registration recommended | Acacia Park Bandshell
EPIC Concert
Join us in the park for an hour of non-stuffy chamber music (classical and new music) from EPIC (Educational Partnerships Immersive Concerts). EPIC is a non-profit music society of classical musicians dedicated to bringing a fresh approach to their craft, combining classical music with other genres. EPIC performs in a relaxed atmosphere, inviting questions and audience interaction. Top quality live chamber music performed by Colorado’s top professional musicians. Find out more
The World of Us film screening (brought to you by CC Mobile Arts)
In this award-winning coming of age tale, two young friends, Sun and Jia, go through the ups and downs of youth. Sun is a transfer student who befriends Jia and forms a strong bond. However, when Sun faces bullying from those around her, she finds her friendship in a hard place. Watch film trailer
Follow CC Mobile Arts Truck on Facebook.
Register for EPIC concert (6 p.m.)
Register for The World of Us film screening (8:30 p.m.)

Beyond the Surface: Ansel Adams Reconsidered
2021-07-15 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
Ansel Adams is often celebrated for his formal contributions to the history of fine art photography as well as his environmental advocacy. In this roundtable conversation, Dr. Tara Kohn, Dr. Carlos Alonso Nugent and Dr. Karen Roybal bring a new perspective to the work of Adams, pushing beyond the surfaces of his images to address the ways his work frames questions about environmental unconsciousness, histories of dispossession, fractured identities, and legacies of violence. The conversation is moderated by Katja Rivera, Curator of Contemporary Art.
This virtual event will be live streamed on social media. Details to come.
Tara Kohn is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at Wells College. She was the 2017–18 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in American Art History at Bowdoin College, and her research has also been supported by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her writing has appeared in American Art, Jewish Translation/Translating Jewishness—a volume she also co-edited—and Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, among other places. Her article “Elevated: Along the Fringes of 291 Fifth Avenue” was named Honorable Mention for the 2019 Director’s Essay Prize at the National Portrait Gallery. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Ancestral Time: Toward a Global History of the Photographic Book. She is based in Ithaca, New York.
Dr. Carlos Alonso Nugent is an Assistant Professor of English at Vanderbilt University, where he will teach courses on U.S. literature and culture, Latinx literature and culture, critical race and ethnic studies, and the environmental humanities. Among other venues, Nugent has published in American Literature, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and Modernism/Modernity Print Plus; in 2020, he received the Norman Foerster Prize for the Best Essay of the Year in American Literature. At present, Nugent is working on two books: in the first, he shows how “imagined environments” have shaped the U.S.–Mexico borderlands since the mid-19th century, and in the second, he traces a tradition of “Latinx ecomedia” back to the colonial period. Nugent received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2020, and held a Mellon Fellowship at Stanford University in 2020–21. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona.
Karen R. Roybal is an assistant professor of Southwest Studies at Colorado College. Her specializations include Southwest Studies, Archival Studies, Chicanx and Latinx literature and history, and Cultural Studies. She teaches courses in literature, arts and culture, archival studies, Southwest/Borderlands history, and environmental justice. Dr. Roybal is the author of Archives of Dispossession: Recovering the Testimonios of Mexican American Herederas, 1848-1960 (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Her most recent project is New Transnational Chicanx Perspectives on Ana Castillo, co-edited with Dr. Bernadine Hernández (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021).

Whimsical Lidded Boxes
2021-07-16 10:00 - 13:00 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Enjoy this unique, semiprivate studio experience. Learn slab construction and glazing techniques to handbuild whimsical lidded boxes from textured clay slabs. Move from flat to free-standing using simple measurements and flat patterns. The boxes you build can be further embellished with decorative elements made from slabs, coils, and pinched shapes. These lidded boxes are pure joyful, self-expressive whimsy! Supply list online. Maximum number of students from the same household: 4. Ages 16-Adult
Instructor: Rui Haagen

Cutting into Color
2021-07-16 10:00 - 13:00 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Matisse traded in his paint brush for a pair of scissors and you can, too! Explore collage using various layering techniques as Matisse did. Use found, prepared, and altered papers of various textures along with paints and pastels to create fabulous out-of-the box compositions. There is an $8 material fee per person payable to the instructor for supplies on the day of class. Fun for the whole family! Youth course ages 6-9. Maximum number of students from the same household: 5
Instructor: Barbara Dimond
