SHELBURNE FALLS — Adult coloring books are all the rage, but here’s a place where you can draw or color for 12 hours that raises money for teen art programs and food for the West County Food Emergency Pantry.
The second annual Hilltown Draw-Around will be held from noon to midnight on Saturday, April 9, at the Cowell Gym at 51 Maple St. Everyone is welcome to come, regardless of age or art skills, to help paint or sketch on roughly 4,000 square feet of paper covering the gym.
Last year’s Draw-Around raised $2,800 for the ARTeens program that is held at the Art Garden, near the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum. This program provides an after-school mentored art studio for Franklin County teens, on a sliding scale. This year’s fundraising goal is $5,000, and admission is by pay-as-you-can cash or check donations. Event volunteers will collect nonperishable foods for the West County Emergency Food Pantry.
About a dozen mini-workshops will be set up throughout the day to provide instruction or inspiration, according to organizer Laura Iverson. Iverson, an artist who moved to Shelburne Falls from New Orleans, modeled this Draw-Around on the Crescent City’s 24-hour draw-athon, put on by Press Street, an artists collective.
“New Orleans has a culture of whimsical creativity,” Iverson said. “People make a lot of art that is ephemeral and not serious. It brings people together and makes art more accessible and easy to try. I think there is a lot of value to that.”
“I mostly wanted to create a community event that highlighted the importance of creating just for the sake of fun,” she said.
The work-shops and drawing events on this day will include: a Doodle Relay; Cartooning Hybrid Beasts; Body Art with Henna; Drawing on Nature; Art-rithmetic: Making Art with Math; and a game show.
For those who just want to color, there will be a giant mandala in the center of the floor.
The organizing committee chose to honor local artist Robert Strong Woodward (1885-1957) by recreating “Bottle Parade,” one of his best-known window paintings on one of the walls. The organizing committee, which includes several artists, will create a grid of the image, so participants can reproduce sections of the painting before putting them together in one large picture.
Last year, many people who came early had so much fun that they came back again later, according to Iverson. “It was nice to see so many people drawing. Too often, people get caught up in their head about how things will be perceived, but people talked about how comfortable this was,” she said.