THE BIG WILLOW CERAMIC PAINTING STUDIO
Come on down this coming weekend to The Big Willow Chapel,
located at 716 King St. West. (A.K.A. The Y.A.K. Building)
This Weekend!
June 19-21
Come by this weekend for free face painting when painting ceramics!
If you are going to the Teddy Bear Picnic be sure to come by and visit us here as
we are right next door!
New!
Big Willow Creative Workshops
Every Saturday- 1:30-2:30, Clay Workshop, one hour. $20.
Drop by for a one hour workshop on Clay hand building.
Call ahead to register
Learn How To Face Paint
This is an adult class taught by Carrie Whalen.
Sat. July 18th and Sunday July 19th. each day from 10a.m.-1p.m.
Cost: $200. This includes a starter face painting kit of 16 colours
Please register by Sat. July 4th.
Offered again Aug. 8-9, same times. Please register 2 weeks in advance.
This is perfect for those working with volunteer agencies who
would like to improve their face painting skills.
The Big Willow Creative Studio:
Hours of operation:
Wednesdays: 1p.m.-6 p.m.
Thursdays: 1 p.m.- 8p.m.
Fridays: 1 p.m.- 8 p.m.
Saturdays: 1 p.m.- 8 p.m.
Sundays: 1 p.m.- 5 p.m.
We will be closed June 26-28 weekend to get ready for summer camp.
Come and paint a ceramic piece to be glazed and fired.
Choose from a large variety of dishes, bowls, cups, platters, and dozens more!
Paint on the weekend and come back and pick it up 5 days later.
This is a great idea for children and grownups. Bring your baby by and print his/her hands and feet on a plate or bowl or mug.
How it works:
A) You choose a bisque piece (unglazed ceramic piece) which could be anything from a mug, bowl, plate, spoon rest, vases, jewelry box, tea pot, etc. The price on the bottom of the piece includes the price of the bisque piece, your first 6 colours of underglaze
paint, glazing, firing, and studio time. Additional underglaze colours are 25. cents each.
B) You sit down and choose your colours and plan your design.
C) Buy your self an organic free trade coffee, tea or hot chocolate to steady your nerves whilst painting!
D) You paint the wonderful mug you always wanted to have.
E) If your child is done before you, he/she may choose to have there face painted by Carrie Whalen. $5. half face or $8. full face.
F) You leave it with us to glaze and fire for you, and you come and pick it up the next Friday!
This is a great way to spend a bit of time in lovely Portsmouth Village with the kids or just by yourself on the weekend. Go for an enchanting walk afterwords down on the nicest waterfront walkway Kingston has to offer. Grab an ice cream cone at the Crazy Portsmouth hardware and video store and walk around the village and check out some of
the prettiest gardens in Kingston.
We will be doing the Ceramic Painting Cafe all summer and if the turnout is good throughout June we may do it during the daytime in July and Aug.
CERAMIC PAINTING WEDDING SHOWERS
Come in and choose the pieces from our catalogue that you would like your guests to paint. We will order them in and you can pick a date and time to have your friends all come and have a ceramic painting wedding shower party.
CERAMIC PAINTING BABY SHOWERS
Come in and choose the pieces from our catalogue that you wold like your guests to paint for your upcoming baby. Since everyone is getting away from plastic it wouldnt hurt to have some ceramic baby plates, bowls and mugs around the kitchen!
We will order them in and you and choose a date and time to have your friends come in and have a baby shower ceramic painting party.
CERAMIC PAINTING BIRTHDAY PARTIES
Bring in your birthday party group and all the kids can paint a small piece, ie. a mug, tile, creature, etc. These pieces will be fired and the birthday mom can come back in a week and pick them up. Min. of $150. per party which include 10 kids painting. $15. extra for every child over and above the 10 children. These are not private parties as are our Y.A.K. Birthday Parties which you can read about on our website yakingston.com and go to birthday parties. The ceramic painting birthday parties happen during the hours of operation for the Ceramic Painting Cafe. If you would like Face Painting for the Ceramic Painting Birthday party please add on $5. per child.
Call for more information,
613 547 5689
SUMMER CAMPS
Click on this link to view the Gallerys
gallery.me.com/cboowhalen
Our 14th Annual Summer Camps Line Up!
15 Years of excellence in Childrens Programming
Professional Instructors, warm/ creative/ wholesome environment
Absolutely the best quality camps anywhere!
This place is a slice of heaven for children and parents!
Here, young people are free to be themselves and explore their interests in a fantastically inspirational environment
My kids look forward to Y.A.K. Camps all year long
I love the birds, bunnies and the homemade muffins
We receive children from all over the world every summer now
I love Carrie & Christine and all the amazing opportunities they offer young people, I hope they never stop
My kids wont go to any other camp, they absolutely love Y.A.K.
Carrie Whalen, an award winning fine arts and fashion design graduate
YAK is only the latest in a series of arts-related businesses Whalen has started over the last decade. Their genesis was in 1987, when Whalen, then an 18-year-old single mother, enrolled at Kingstons St. Lawrence College. Seven years later she emerged with diplomas in fine arts and fashion design and a bevy of awards for her art and design work, including the Liquitex art achievement award, and fourth-place honors at the prestigious Air France International Young Designers competition in Paris. Whalen was chosen by Pierre Cardin and other great fashion legends as the best young design graduate in Canada and tied for fourth internationally at a competition set in the Louvre in 1994. Whalen also won awards in the Shmirnoff Fashion Design Competitions in 1993 & 1994.
But while she had plenty of job placement offers from design firms including one from Bella Freud, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freuds great-granddaughter and head of a top fashion house, Whalen decided that she was not yet a big-city girl. After a stint working at Freuds in London, England, she returned to Canada.
Back home in Kingston, she took business planning courses at St. Lawrence and launched the Canadian Designers Co-op, a fashion incubator, where early-career fashion designers could design, manufacture, promote and sell their work. The co-op was based in Kingston on Lower Princess St.; a $40,000 Community Action Grant was awarded to Whalen from the Ontario government which allowed her to fill the space with industrial fashion design equipment purchased from the defunct St. Lawrence College fashion design program.
The co-op attracted a steady stream of up-and-coming fashion talent from Kingston and elsewhere, but constantly found itself struggling financially. To help make ends meet Whalen organized fundraising events such as fashion shows and an art camp for kids. Whalen dubbed the art camp Art Attack a moniker she reconsidered about three years later.
I found out there was an English TV show with the same name, she says. So I had a little name-the-business contest with the kids in the program and one of them suggested Y.A.K., Young Artists of Kingston. It was perfect.
Today, YAK operates out of the former Portsmouth United Church, which Whalen purchased in 2002. The 150-year-old structure houses the art classes and a growing collection of power and hand tools Whalen uses to build the tables, trays, canvas frames and other project bases that children later transform into works of art. The building also houses a childrens aviary filled with very friendly Cockatiels and Lovebirds, and a few bunnies to boot.
Since its inception, YAK has grown steadily. Today, in addition to one-week-long summer and March break Art Camps, it offers programs in Theatre, Face Painting, Animation, Fashion Design, V.A.D.A.R. Camp (video, audio documentary reporter), Digital Photography, Special F/X Makeup, Craft Camp, Clay Camp, and yes, even Bird Camp. In the off-season Whalen rents out YAKs chapel as a weekend birthday-party venue. It is also made available for nonprofit arts-related events such as musical performance, plays and so on.
YAK is a full-time job, but Whalen is not one to sit still for long. Along with Christine Harvey, who runs Whalens Theatre programs.
Three years ago Whalen started face painting for fun during her summer programs. This interest has turned into a very busy sideline over the last couple years and Carrie has become by far the most sought after professional face painter around. Whalens face and body art is spectacular. Whether she is painting at a large city event like The Kingston Buskers Festival, The Teddy Bear Picnic, The Sheep Dog Trials, or the Lung Associations Festival of Flowers, or private business parties such as her regular gigs for the The Rocking Hoarse Toy Store or The Kingston Public Health Unit, or doing private home parties, Whalen draws a quite a crowd. In the past year Carrie has been hired by several large organizations to teach their volunteers how to face paint.
CHRISTINE HARVEY
Christine Harvey is an energetic lady, with a Bachelor of Arts Honours in Drama and a Bachelor of Education. She has taught for the Limestone District School Board, the Upper Canada District School Board, and The Renfrew District School Board mostly grades seven and eight. She is the founder of the Not So Amateur Amateurs (NSAA), a non-profit theatre company in Kingston, Ontario. The company accommodates casts of 10 – 80 young people. She writes and co-directs for the company. They are gearing up for their 6th year of productions. Christine has written over twenty-nine theatre pieces, including three full-length and one one-act musicals. Three of her plays have been published by an international publishing company in the UK, ten are published by Scripts for Schools in BC and some of them are featured in her book, Stage It: Three Plays and a Monologue.
Christine has extensive experience in theatre, as over the years she has directed over a hundred childrens plays, organized numerous drama clubs, taught drama at several different schools, and instructed drama workshops for teachers and theatre practitioners. Other roles have included head of drama for Dreams In Motion (a performing arts school in Gananoque), drama consultant, actor, and performing coach for Children’s Aid Society training videos, and director, coordinator and resident playwright for Young Artists of Kingston (YAK) since 1997. She has acted in commercials and videos, has participated as a performer in Kingstons Standardized Patient Program, and was a collective owner and actor in the Spotlight Surfers, a traveling acting troupe that has performed at several birthday parties, schools City of Kingston events, and the Kingston Buskers Festival. She started up a democratic private school which integrates theatre and the arts into all aspects of learning. She is a co-owner of Drama Queens Publishing Company and won a grant from Curriculum Services Canada to develop a unit to instruct teachers on how to teach playwriting in the classroom. The unit is available on the Curriculum Services website. An even better version will be available for purchase through Scripts for Schools soon. In addition, Christine ran the Drama portion of the Kingston Youth Arts Cooperative (KYAC) program in Kingston for four years and owns, runs, renovates, and helped found The Inverary Playhouse.
Here are some websites you can find out more about Christine Harvey and her projects: yakingston.com(Christine runs the Theatre Camp) dreamsinmotion.ca(Christine runs the Theatre Program) inveraryplayhouse.org(Christine helps with the theatrical productions in this space) doolee.com(Search Christine Harvey on this site) lazybeescripts.co.uk(click on plays for kids and look for “Like You’ve Never Seen it Before” and “The Super Secret Surprise Casserole” trafford.com(search Stage It: Three Plays and a Monologue) scriptsforschools.com(look under play scripts on the tool bar to the left) 130.15.23.21/~kyac/ (click on Instructors, then on More about Christine Harvey)