By Gabrielle Liu – Editor-in-Chief

“The experience of creating with others is healing,” says Foreman Art Gallery’s ArtLab coordinator, Camila Vásquez. The ArtLab has revived its art hives, a space where community members can enjoy the art studio for free twice a week. Art hives are run through donated materials and supported by student facilitators who can guide your session. They run every Monday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturday from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

This fall, the ArtLab plans on meeting the Bishop’s community through pop-up art hives – mobile art stations that offer the community a taste of their regular sessions. “We felt that lots of people didn’t know what the ArtLab is,” said Vásquez. These pop-up art hives will have a selection of materials brought from the ArtLab. The pop-up hives’ sessions will be different each time, such as a fabric and sewing-based station one time, but a cardboard-based session for another.

The ArtLab has created pop-ups in partnership with the Lennoxville Library, Bekkah’s Bakery and the Carrefour jeunesse-emploi de Sherbrooke. The pop-ups on campus are still under development, but Vásquez emphasizes that the hives are developed through dialogue with their venue hosts. The Lennoxville Library hoped to engage adults in art, so the ArtLab chose magazines as the craft supply – a more challenging material to work with.

Each art hive session is staffed by a facilitator who is a fine arts or psychology student with an interest in art therapy. Facilitators are not teachers who will tell you what to do, but they can guide personal projects students want to develop, Vásquez said. She adds that “the facilitator is there to develop her own creation” too. Art hives run on the belief that everyone has something to teach and something to learn.

The art hive movement was built on the philosophy that artistic creation should be a human right. According to Vásquez, the movement in its modern form began with Professor Janis Timm-Bottos’ work in the US during the ‘90s. Timm-Bottos eventually moved to Montreal and began her research at Concordia University. Since then, her work and students have launched a network of art hives across the country. The goal was “to create a space that will allow people to build community and build art,” said Vásquez.

According to Vásquez, Foreman’s ArtLab was one of the first art hives in the region, established in the early 2010s. Now, there are many hives across the Eastern Townships. The ArtLab even hosted the Spring Institute of Art Hives during the summer, a three-day intensive training for art hive leaders. 

The ArtLab’s art hives are always free, and students are welcome to work on projects that last more than one session. The ArtLab is located in Centennial Theatre, below the Foreman Art Gallery.