{"id":2456031,"date":"2020-03-19T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=322967"},"modified":"2020-03-19T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T22:00:00","slug":"aspen-at-home-basalts-art-base-provides-free-art-kits-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-at-home-basalts-art-base-provides-free-art-kits-for-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen at home: Basalt\u2019s Art Base provides free art kits for all"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The best thing most people can do to help right now is nothing. Stay in, avoid people, don\u2019t go to work, only go out for necessities and exercise a safe distance.<\/p>\n

Even artists are powerless to express themselves in the usual ways during this public health crisis. The musician can\u2019t play for crowds. The actor can\u2019t perform in the theater. The painter and sculptor can\u2019t share their work with museum visitors.<\/p>\n

And, along with closing and canceling exhibitions, arts organizations like the Art Base in Basalt can\u2019t host the art classes for kids and adults that have helped make them valuable community assets.<\/p>\n

But the Art Base quickly saw a way to be of service during the coronavirus shut-down of public life.<\/p>\n

The center announced its closure on Friday, March 13. By that afternoon they had begin making hundreds of their new Art Kits To-Go, providing them free for pickup on the Art Base\u2019s back porch to help people make art at home while social distancing.<\/p>\n

As they faced a closure last week, executive director Genna Moe and her staff discussed ideas about how they could be of service to their community while people were staying at home and do so without risking transmission of the new coronavirus.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our staff members said, \u2018Hey, what if we offer art kits to-go,\u201d Moe recalled.<\/p>\n

The staff raided all of their supplies on hand in the building, sorted them, sanitized them, and began filling brown paper lunch bags with a trove of art tools: crayons, pencils, foam balls, stickers, wood tent models, pipe cleaners, glue sticks, assorted paper and the like.<\/p>\n

They placed them on the porch \u2013 under a large painted sign \u201cArt Kits To Go\u201d and put out the word on social media, encouraging people to pick them up, make art at home and share it online (the Art Base launched the hashtag #socialdistancingart). By Saturday, 60 of the kits had found homes. By this week, they were putting out as many as 160 daily.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe art kits were such a hit, clearly they filled a need quickly,\u201d Moe said. \u201cWe have an accountability to the community, to Basalt and to all local residents, to encourage people to keep art as part of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The kits include prompts for art-making projects in English and Spanish, which have changed with new batches and can be used by both kids and adults. The prompts include things like \u201cSit quietly for 1 minute and then draw the sounds you hear,\u201d \u201cIllustrate your dream last night,\u201d \u201cCollage portraits of your family members\u201d and \u201cMake a viewfinder with your hands, draw what you see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The instructions open with a declaration: \u201cJust because we are apart, doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t make art!\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not the first crisis that Moe and the Art Base have weathered and to which they have mounted a rapid response. During the Lake Christine Fire in Basalt in summer 2018, the Art Base provided art-making activities at local evacuation centers and later hosted expressive art therapy for locals in stress and anxiety.<\/p>\n

For children especially, a positive experience with art during crises can have a lifelong effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they grow up and remember this, they might remember picking up the kit and making something,\u201d Moe said. \u201cThis could be a positive impressionable experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

So even before public orders to shut down started last week, Moe and her team were working on how to have a positive impact and help stop the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt we had to start thinking about further implications,\u201d Moe said. \u201cCommunity centers are likely transmission hubs with so many people coming through the doors everyday of all ages and from all communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Art Base team is also working on providing virtual resources in the days to come, said Moe, expecting to launch online versions of its \u201cArt Healing and Hope\u201d classes for adults and young people, tutorials and videos with local artists.<\/p>\n

Moe also noted that free art-making is not new to the Art Base, so unloading all of their art supplies for free was an easy choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of our youth programs and several of our community adult programs are free,\u201d noted Moe. \u201cThe emphasis is on access to art for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like all local busineses and nonprofits, the coronavirus shutdown has had an immediate financial impact on the Art Base. After a few days of providing the free kits, the Art Base began including donation envelopes inside. Moe, on Wednesday, was also working on setting up ways for its part-time teachers to continue bringing in income while serving the public, such as paid online tutorials, as the organization has in the short-term lost all of its earned income from its classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery donation helps right now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Art Base will continue to provide their Art Kits To-Go as long as there is demand and need for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cCreativity encourages us to think outside the box and solve problems creatively,\u201d Moe said. \u201cThat\u2019s what our society needs most right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best thing most people can do to help right now is nothing. Stay in, avoid people, don\u2019t go to work, only go out for necessities and exercise a safe distance. Even artists are powerless to express themselves in the usual ways during this public health crisis. The musician can\u2019t play for crowds. The actor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2456031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 09:12:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2456031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2456031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2456031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2456031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}