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38 Years of Igniting, Educating, and Nurturing
The Artistic Spirit
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Adult Art Classes!
We are thrilled to present a dynamic and diverse array of adult classes, each led by our talented local teaching artists who bring a wealth of unique skills and rich backgrounds to the table. These classes are vibrant opportunities for personal artistic growth, self-discovery, and meaningful self-expression, perfectly aligned with our mission to foster creativity and inclusivity within our community.
We warmly invite you to explore the offerings below, where you can delve into the inspiring biographies of our instructors and discover how their expertise can ignite your own creative journey. To join us in this exciting adventure, simply click the blue SIGN UP HERE button beneath each class to register.
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Coaster Madness
with Lisa Rappoport
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Sunday, June 1, 2025
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
| | Join Lisa in this coaster making class! Who doesn’t love coasters?? They do present a few printing issues, but their charm makes it all worthwhile. This class is suited for beginners to letterpress, who will learn how to set type, mix ink, and operate a tabletop press; as well as experienced printers, who may or may not have printed on coaster stock before but would like to spend the day having fun doing so at Arts Benicia. Everyone will take home an assortment of 4″ round coasters. | |
| | Lisa Rappoport publishes poetry broadsides and artist’s books under the imprint Littoral Press. Since 1998 she has produced a series of broadsides by the poets who teach at the Community of Writers; she has also printed poetry broadsides for Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books, the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, the Northern California Book Awards, and many others. Her book The Short Goodbye received the Alastair Johnston Fine Press Award and was a runner-up in the Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design. She teaches workshops in letterpress printing and book arts at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Lisa’s work has been displayed nationally and is in collections throughout the U.S. | | | | Surrealism and Translucency in Collage with Holly King | | |
Saturday, June 14 and Sunday, June 15, 2025
Saturday: 2: 00 pm - 6:00 pm
Sunday: 10:30 am – 3:30 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
In this class students will explore the concepts of surrealism and translucency in collage. On the first day we will explore glues, mediums and techniques for making low tech transfer images. A variety of papers and textiles will be utilized to make transparencies. On the second day, students will utilize the transparencies prepared in the first session to make collages honoring the concept of surrealism.
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| | Holly King has a Masters Degree in Speech and Communication Studies from San Francisco State University and a 1/2 of an MFA in Glass from Rochester Institute of Technology. She taught Speech and Communication at Portland Community College for 18 years. She currently resides in Vallejo California. She has participated in a handful of group shows including at Benicia Arts, Healdsburg Center for the Arts, The Falkirk Cultural Center, Las Laguna Gallery and Chroma Gallery. | | | |
R&F Pigment Stick Gelli Prints
with Melissa Stephens
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Saturday, June 21, 2025
1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
1 Commandant's Lane, Benicia
Let your creative juices flow in this amazing 3-hour workshop where you will learn how to make beautiful prints using stencils, stamps and recycled materials using R&F Pigment sticks and Gelli plates. Discover the thrill of working with lusciously colored oil-based R&F pigment sticks. Techniques are approachable and easily achieved for immediate and amazing and results.
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Melissa Stephens is an encaustic painter, photographer and printmaker who has spent 15 years educating children and adults in the arts. She received a BA in Art from Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, IA, and continues her arts education through specialized instruction. Her encaustic paintings explore themes of: healing and hope. She is an encaustic painting instructor and advocate for the arts in Walnut Creek, California. Her artwork shows in galleries nationally and internationally. In 2022 she co-founded the NorCAL Wax Chapter and started the annual Hope Lives: Art for ALS exhibition.
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Hard Bound Cloth Case Book
with Gillian Boal
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Sundays, June 29 and July 6, 2025
10:00 am - 3:30 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
Join Gillian in this Cloth Case Book workshop. We will assemble a blank hand sewn book from scratch. We will fold and cut the paper for the text block, then sew it on tapes. We will attach endsheets cut to size. We will line the spine and create a cloth cover for the binding. We will cut the board and cloth and assemble the book by casing the text block into the cover.
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| | Gillian Boal is a trained bookbinder and a Library Conservator of books. Gillian has been working for more than 50 years in the profession. Gillian taught this class in the Benicia Public Library last year and made booklets using the paper with students. | | | |
Encaustic Painting
with Angela White
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Sunday, July 20, 2025
11:00 am - 4:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
| | Join Angela for this workshop for some who have little familiarity and some who have experienced working with the medium, but seek to refine their skills. Diversity of learning is covered, including the basic materials and techniques, safety issues and discussions of supports, grounds, layering, scraping, fusing, transparencies, collage, image transfer, including combination with oil and other media | |
| | Angela White is a fine artist who is inspired by physical, spiritual, and emotional memories that create the visual depth and density of her work. Abstracts and seascapes compose the majority of her compositions. In the past 20 years, Angela has exhibited oil, encaustic, and mixed media paintings extensively in juried shows across the DC metropolitan area as well as in New York and the West Coast. She holds two B.A. degrees and an M.A. degree from the University of Maryland. | | | |
Solarplate Printmaking: Focus on Relief Printing with Robynn Smith
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Saturday, August 9, 2025
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
Join Robynn in this Solarplate printmaking class that focuses on Relief. Solarplate printmaking is an exciting way to explore photographic, collaged and /or hand drawn imagery in printmaking. Each plate may be re-used to yield dozens of prints and may be printed in conjunction with other plates. This session will focus on relief prints, while serving as a solid introduction to Solarplate printmaking in general.
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| | Robynn Smith received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from San Jose State University. Robynn grew up in New York and for the past 40 years, has made Santa Cruz her home. She is an internationally exhibiting artist and Professor Emerita, at Monterey Peninsula College. As a teacher, Robynn emphasizes technique, content, and safety, while meeting each student at their individual level of experience. Robynn works in both painting and printmaking, combining layers of information that combine to reveal and obscure moments of beauty, familiarity, trauma, submerged memory, and subconscious reality. | | | |
Solarplate Printmaking: Focus on Intaglio Printing with Robynn Smith
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Sunday, August 10, 2025
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
Join Robynn in this Solarplate printmaking class that focuses on Intaglio Solarplate printmaking is an exciting way to explore photographic, collaged and /or hand drawn imagery in printmaking. Each plate may be re-used to yield dozens of prints and may be printed in conjunction with other plates. This session will focus on relief prints, while serving as a solid introduction to Solarplate printmaking in general.
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Explore Painterly Screen Printing
with Kelly Autumn
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Sunday, September 21 & Sunday, September, 28th, 2025
11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street, Suite 116, Benicia
Experience making art on a silkscreen without the traditional use of photo emulsion, a computer or an exposure unit. Come learn about alternative methods of screen printing using painterly techniques and water-based acrylics. Together, we’ll explore creative ways to achieve surprising and bold abstract silkscreened prints on paper.
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| | Kelly Autumn is an Asian American visual artist and multidisciplinary printmaker based in Sonoma County. Kelly received her Bachelor’s of Art Degree from San Francisco State University and pursued a focus in Printmaking and Studio Arts at Diablo Valley College under the mentorship of artist, Toru Sugita. Kelly is a passionate arts educator with a natural curiosity for combining traditional print methods with an experimental mixed-media approach. She is also an exhibiting artist throughout the Bay Area and serves on the Board of Directors of the California Society of Printmakers. Since 2020, Kelly has been a teaching artist with the Sonoma Community Center. She currently leads the printmaking department as its Program Coordinator and founder of Print Lab. | | | |
Printmaking Playground is Back!
with Colleen Gianatiempo
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Sunday, October 19, 2025
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
Join Colleen and discover diverse Gelli Printing techniques in this immersive workshop. Rediscover your creativity and make the most of your Gelli printing plate in this exciting mixed-media workshop! Explore new techniques, including self-portrait printing with oil pastels, sun-powered cyanotype printing, and layering multiple styles to create stunning prints on paper. This workshop blends watercolor, oil pastels, cyanotype, and more for a unique and expressive printmaking experience.
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| | Colleen Gianatiempo is a mixed media artist, educator, and designer living and working in her new location in St. George, Utah. She works in many mediums and thrives most when she can experiment and discover new techniques. In 2017, Colleen earned an MFA in Non-Figurative abstract painting from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. As her formal art career developed, she has been privileged to be selected for several heart-themed public art projects including Hearts of San Francis-co, The Heart of Sonoma, The American Backyard (city of Dublin, CA), Sea Lions of San Francisco, and Small Town with A Big Heart Mural in Martinez. This has given her the reputation as “the Artist with a Heart”. | | | | |
Working Small: Abstract Collage and Mixed Media - All Levels
with Carol Dalton
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Sunday, November 2, 2025
10:00 am – 3:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
All Levels. In this workshop you will use paper as a base, work abstractly in a spontaneous process assembling collages whose outer dimensions will range from two to eight inches. Selecting materials and orchestrating their relations to build a design is key to creating a unique work of art.
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| | Carol Dalton graduated from the Santa Barbara Art Institute, a part of Brooks Institute. Majoring in painting from 1971-1974 and receiving several scholarships, she also studied printmaking and ceramics. Dalton has been exhibiting for over thirty years in Bay Area galleries, and is currently represented by Stewart Kummer Gallery in California, and in Santa Fe, Jen Tough Gallery. She has work included in the Crocker Art Museum, the Monterey Art Museum, and corporate collections including Kaiser Permanente. Carol’s work is included in many private collections, locally and abroad. In addition to exhibiting her artwork, Carol has taught workshops focusing on “Working Small,” one of her specialties, and has juried exhibits for Jen Tough Gallery and Arts Benicia. | | | | |
Working Small: Abstract Collage and Mixed Media - Advanced
with Carol Dalton
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Sunday, November 9, 2025
10:00 am – 3:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street Suite 116, Benicia
Advanced level, some experience helpful. Technique to be explored include preparing a “ground” by layering fragments of paper, painting and drawing to enrich the design and repurposing discarded works by assembling them for puzzling “old” materials into a new image.
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Mondays or Saturdays
9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Arts Benicia Annex, 991 Tyler Street, Suite 116, Benicia
***please contact instructor about space availability if newly registering for this workshop
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Held on select Wednesdays (See website for exact dates)
3:00 pm – 6:00 pm
1 Commandant’s Lane, Benicia
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Help Nurture The Arts In Your Community!
Your donations and memberships sustain Arts Benicia and make it possible to continue our 38+ year history of enriching and nurturing our community through the visual arts. Show your support today! Click below, or visit Artsbenicia.org.
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ARTS BENICIA | 707-747-0131 | info@artsbenicia.org | artsbenicia.org
1 Commandant's Lane, Benicia, CA, 94510
Mailing Address: Arts Benicia, PO Box 545, Benicia, CA 94510
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