In Focus: MacRostie Art Center Offering Unique Classes For 2018

The MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids has been in business for 51 years now, but 2018 may just be one of their busiest years yet.

“We’ve been doing non-stop kids classes at least 2 to 3 times a week for the past year and a half,” says David Dobbs, the education director at the MacRostie Art Center.

Almost everything creative you can think of is a class at the MacRostie Art Center. Currently, they have a class that’s teaching young kids and teens how to draw in an anime and manga style.

“We’ve only had one week so far in the comic book class, but the first thing we started off with was just basically making a cartoon character: how do you make a regular person look like a comic book or look like an anime character,” says Dobbs.

From pottery making and basket weaving to anime and animation, the MacRostie Art Center is always coming up with new classes for the public to enjoy.

“It helps a lot of kids to learn how to take chances and to be okay with failing, because art doesn’t come naturally to anybody so you have to practice at it and help the kids understand how to take risks and to be okay if the risks don’t succeed,” says Dobbs.

Another cool thing about the MacRostie Art center is they offer scholarships so money is hardly ever an issue.

Dobb says, “The scholarships are open for anyone, all ages and it’s whatever you can afford. We don’t want to turn any kids away so there’s scholarships available for kids, and I’ll always make the classes available for kids no matter what your income level is.”

For future classes, the center is hoping to get new technology involved, like this past summer when they hosted a class that incorporated a 3D printer. Right now, their 2018 calendar includes woodcarving, collage making, jewelry making, and even wine and paints or beer and paints for adults. Then there’s pottery, painting and stop-motion animation for kids. Dobbs says one of the cool things about teaching the kids classes is watching them go on the journey.

“You also get to see their skills improve. You get to see them start off by barely being able to draw a circle to being able to draw people to places and making their own worlds,” says Dobbs.

A full calendar and scholarship information for the MacRostie Art Center can be found here.