ARTS+CULTURE MAKE YOUR MARK WITH SQUIGGLA

by Jessica Allen

This January Te Atamira is hosting Squiggla, a series of workshops that are a gymnasium for creative thinking. Aimed at adults, the programme encourages creative thinking through free-flow mark-making. It’s all about visual exploration and creative discovery without the pressure of copying anything or ‘making art’.

The goal of each workshop is to have fun and to develop creative skills, especially for those that do not consider themselves to be creative. The pressure is taken off here where there is no ultimate goal other than simply trusting the process. Part of what they hope to achieve is to recreate the same experience that children have when they are creating – that intuition that they seem to have. Creations will be based off of abstract things such as lines, dots, squiggles and different shapes, rather than studying a subject and trying to recreate it.

Each of the Squiggla workshops will be run by artist Kasia Hebda and have a different themes. In December, the first workshop was run with the theme of play – encouraging those involved to unlearn all they’ve learnt and to connect with their playful side. The upcoming workshops in January will have the themes of make – no mistakes, just make, imagine – allowing your senses to guide you, and invent –making a signature mark.

“The topics are the base for the workshops. I will come up with different exercises and we will create different things. With play, I first introduced people to materials and they were creating their works but then at the end we created a common work that we all did together on a big roll of brown paper that we wrote on the floor. I will try to do different types of collaboration between people in every workshop,” says Kasia.

Kasia is originally from Poland and has a background in art restoration, which is what she studied. She moved to New Zealand three years ago and started running drawing classes at Te Atamira a few months ago. She says the feedback for the first Squiggla workship has been great.

“At the beginning, people were a little bit uptight – it’s something new for them and they didn’t know what to expect. Then at the end, they were chatting and working together – it seemed like everybody was in their zone and all realised that we’re perfectly relaxed. The time goes by so fast, we didn’t even realise it was already time to wrap it up. That’s exactly what I wanted to achieve – it was really playful.”

The Squiggla workshops will run on Sunday 8 January at 11am with the theme make, Tuesday 10 and 17 January from 6pm with the theme imagine, and Tuesday 24 January from 6pm with the theme invent. If you’d like to get involved with the workshops you can simply pop in to the classes, or pre book to ensure you don’t miss out at teatamira. nz/events/squiggla. You can also find out more about Kasia and the classes that she offers at her Instagram page @kasia.hebda.studio