Making things — whether it’s art or technology — is a creative and often collaborative process.
Herrick District Library’s Groundworks space will host a Maker in Residence beginning this fall to bring together the community around a common project and learn more about the creative process.
The library’s first Maker in Residence will be celebrated local artist Joel Schoon-Tanis.
Schoon-Tanis has been a fixture in the Holland community for decades, and his artwork — especially his public murals — is instantly recognizable.
He has been a working artist for more than 30 years and has written and illustrated books (including "The Dragon Pack Snack Attack", “40: the Biblical story”, “At Psalm’s School” and “Lulu and the Long Walk”) and painted murals around the world (including Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, the Dominican Republic, Germany and Palestine). His work is in churches, children’s hospitals, schools, restaurants, businesses and many private collections.
“I thought it was such a cool initiative, and if I could be a part of promoting it, that was exciting to me,” Schoon-Tanis says.
In addition to providing the community access to up-to-date technology, equipment and tools needed to learn and create new things, the HDL Maker in Residence program is designed to help patrons discover new things and connect with like-minded people all while highlighting a local artist or maker and their work, Groundworks Coordinator Dan Zuberbier says.
“The Maker in Residence program tries to provide the time and space people need to connect over a shared interest,” he says.
The Maker in Residence program will include drop-in times when anyone can come to Groundworks to simply observe Schoon-Tanis in action — as well as ask questions of Schoon-Tanis and maybe try their own hand at something creative.
Anyone can observe Schoon-Tanis painting in the Groundworks space at the main library and ask questions about his process — 6-8 p.m. Oct. 1 and 10 a.m.-noon Oct. 9., 16, 22, Nov. 6, 7, 13, and 20.
“The focus of the drop-ins is to provide the community an opportunity to connect with the maker, ask questions about his artwork, learn something new about painting or discover a new way to express their own creativity,” Zuberbier says.
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Courtesy Joel Schoon-TanisJoel Schoon-Tanis has been an artist for more than 30 years and written and illustrated books (including "The Dragon Pack Snack Attack", “40: the Biblical story”, and “Lulu and the Long Walk”) and painted murals around the world.
The power of the brainstorm
The library and Schoon-Tanis will host “Let it Storm: How to Brainstorm Better” 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15 (registration opens Tuesday, Oct. 1) at Groundworks. Schoon-Tanis will talk through all of the aspects of the creative process — with a special emphasis on brainstorming. Participants will play some creativity-starting drawing games and then help brainstorm ideas for a community Big Read art project related to this year's Little Read book,
Dreamers by Yuyi Morales.
The book revolves around a family and the dreams they start to imagine and realize because of books from the library.
The workshop is open to people of all ages.
“I have ideas, but I want them to be shaped and influenced by the group,” Schoon-Tanis says. "One of the things I like about collaborative artwork is something always gets discovered I would not have discovered on my own.”
All those good ideas will be put to work during “Playing with Paint and Collaborating with Collage 6-8 p.m. Nov 5 at Groundworks when community members come together to paint a large-scale art piece to be displayed at Hope College as part of the Big Read. No registration and no previous experience are necessary.
“What’s interesting about collaborative art is you could approach the exact same project a couple of months from now and if you brought in a different group of people the outcome would be different and that’s the cool thing about creativity when done collaboratively,” Schoon-Tanis says.
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