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<\/a>With two years on the board under her belt, event coordinator Tove Wiggs said she was eager to help organize Family Art Day.<\/p>\n
Wiggs said \u201cMany people who volunteer are from the arts community, art supporters, a handful of WSU students and members of the River Arts Alliance board.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe River Arts Alliance has all sorts of different artists as members and friends of the organization,\u201d Wiggs said.\u00a0 \u201cI just really wanted to expand into some of the forms of art that are beyond 2D and 3D; into music, movements and poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n
With 23 art activities, around 30 artists, live music and food from Rubio\u2019s, the event was busy from the start, with numbers close to the 550 people who participated in 2016 according to Wiggs.<\/p>\n
The art stations included familiar arts like water color, pottery, finger painting and beading while adding more unique art mediums like movement arts, weaving, poetry, cosmic knots and wood carving with wire.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a number of people that I ran into this week that told me they were really excited,\u201d Wiggs said. \u201cTheir kids have been looking forward to this and asking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Minnesota Marine Art Museum has participated in this event for 10 years.<\/p>\n This year, the museum introduced a type of art that included a small history lesson called cyanotype.<\/p>\n Cyanotype is photographic printing process that uses the sun to expose a special cyan paper to produce images of objects laid on top of the paper, some artists would use this medium to document plants along the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t just for kids, parents are doing activities too,\u201d Wiggs said. \u201cWhile this is primarily for children adults have just as much fun being here and trying things out too.\u201d<\/p>\n During Family Art Day families can sit down with individuals who make their living as artists and learn from them.<\/p>\n Artists come from surrounding communities and sometimes from outside the state.<\/p>\n Like Sarah Johnson from La Crosse, Wisconsin is trained as a mental therapist and practices multi-media art as her hobby. She said she often uses art to aid in therapy.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first year I have been involved in this and I think it\u2019s awesome,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI\u2019m loving watching the families creating art together, it\u2019s really cool and makes me really proud of Winona.\u201d<\/p>\n After hearing about the event from a friend, Johnson said she decided to become one of the artist volunteers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s right up my alley, I love are and love young people and seeing their creativity, anything that builds community I support.\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Parents and children gather excitedly Saturday morning Sept. 2, 2017 at Jaycee\u2019s Pavilion in Winona\u2019s Lake Park for the tenth annual Family Art Day. Sponsored by a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council this event helps introduce children to a variety of art mediums that may not be available to them otherwise. Winona\u2019s River … Continue reading Winona’s 10 Annual Family Art Day<\/span> <\/a><\/a>