Art Gym

What is Art Gym?

Art Gym is a community, a practice, and a space for exercising creativity. Art Gym is two hours each week when artists gather for a facilitated art-making activity. 

We use a gym metaphor first and foremost because it is silly and allows us to say weird things like, “Grab a pen and let’s do some reps!” This silliness is important in itself – may we all get more access to being less serious – and it helps us remember that we are not here to create perfect things, that in fact, we’re not at Art Gym to produce anything at all. We are at Art Gym for the process, for the practice that is an essential part of being an artist and is at the same time, very difficult to prioritize and integrate into our full lives.

Through silliness and practice, Art Gym is a cultivator of creative community. We know that creativity grows in rich, supportive environments, fed by the reflections, feedback, and art of others. And if it’s hard to make time for creative practice, it can be even harder to find time to connect with others for wide ranging, creative conversation. Art Gym is a chance to practice art in community because Art Gym knows that we need each other (we spot each other ;).

Finally, Art Gym is a deeply reflective space. It is for anybody who wants to think big, critically, and reflectively together – and then pursue and document that thinking through art. Because Art Gym is focused on process over product, we try out different forms and tentative ideas; we sometimes voice them to one another and sometimes do not. We are sometimes bringing pain or tragedy into the light, exploring its sharp points and limits, and holding it together. We are always encouraging and growing with one another.

How does Art Gym?

Each week, one of the members of Art Gym facilitates our session. We host our sessions in a cabin in the Goldstream Valley of Alaska, always on Sunday afternoons. Sessions range from borrowed, tried-and-true practices/prompts to what we call a “raven’s stash” – a collection of ideas, passages from books, materials, and other shiny objects gathered by the facilitator and offered to the group try to build connections through our practice. Facilitators bring materials and sometimes prompt a particular creative activity – a collage, a self portrait, a piece of speculative fiction. The session is always two hours and is often but not always the same group.

Below, we are sharing the prompts we use week-to-week – most of them created explicitly for Art Gym – in hopes that others might open their own gyms and might want to use or riff off of what’s worked for us.

Art is heavy lifting; let’s do it together.