Art League classes aim at young Da Vincis

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Ellamonique Baccus shows a painting by an African-American artist who uses Renaissance motifs in the background of contemporary works from a collection at the Oak Park Public Library. | Meredith Morris~for Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 3, 2012 11:27AM

The Oak Park Art League is expanding its palette. Look for the League, a 91-year institution, to offer a wider range of new classes and other programming geared to its community’s evolving needs.

“We are making the league an exciting place to be,” said Jacqui Ross, board member and chairman of the League’s Education Committee. That means adding an array of new options to the League’s traditional roster of instruction in oil painting, drawing and other fine arts specialties. New concepts include a “Computers for Artists” adult course addressing artists’ Web sites and online art marketing, and a “Days Off School” course scheduled for children on school holidays.

“We are looking to expand our programs and reflect more local interests,” Ross said. “Art education, art classes and instruction are the bulk of what we do. We serve the needs of artists, budding artists and children getting involved in art.”

Youth classes, in particular, are being developed with the intent of making them “more than just come in and paint a picture,” Ross said. For instance, a mini-masters course designed for this year’s spring break will introduce children to artists such as Picasso and Matisse, and include a related project.

One new course is “Discovering Da Vinci,” a seven-week course currently under way and offered again on April 1. It will introduce 7- to 9-year-olds to the connection between art and science.

Course instructor Ellamonique Baccus is a professional artist and licensed clinical counselor specializing in art therapy. New to the league, Baccus got to know it as a speaker at a conference it held for childhood educators last fall.

Trained in Renaissance oil painting, Baccus is an art, science and Da Vinci fan herself. She hopes the course will intrigue children and help them find at least one interest they will pursue beyond the class.

“This will be really fun for children because concepts will be taught to them in different ways,” she said. “We’ll learn engineering in terms of making something that works but still looks good. A lot of things will be happening but won’t seem hard, through projects like planting flowers, making paint and building a flying machine. Children will also keep journals, like Da Vinci kept sketchbooks.”

Baccus hopes the experience will leave each child artistically, socially and emotionally enriched.

“If you can find a strength in a child and say something positive about it, they remember,” she said. “Later on, they recall, ‘Oh! I can do that well!’”

Baccus welcomes the opportunity to teach youth in Oak Park.

“This is a community of families. When you have parents who care about bringing out the best, a child can really benefit,” she said.

Baccus hopes to eventually employ her art therapy skills at the League, teaching a class for 12- and 13-year-olds that uses art to help them express themselves. This would be part of the League’s upcoming offerings for ‘tweens,’ who are young people caught between the childhood and teenage years.

The league aims to launch a new direction of ‘tweens’ programming this fall, Ross said.

“It’s an age of ‘who am I? and ‘what am I?’ There’s a whole body of work about using art to find your identity,” she said.

The Oak Park Art League, 720 Chicago Ave., has public gallery hours from 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. To learn more, see the League’s course catalog and register for a class, visit www.opal-art.com or call (708) 386-9853.