Gallery
گالری
Spring 2025
The Spring 2025 session was themed “Fun + Calm/Relaxing” and was co-generated with Hamrah youth. This session continued artmaking as a collaborative and exploratory practice with a focus on photography and experimental media such as paper weaving, oil pastel painting, and mixed media collage. On the first day, teaching artist, Ben (standing), introduced the basics on photography and composition, with learners holding up their own cut-out card as a framing device.
Guest teaching artist, Linda (first row, center), facilitated a colorful workshop on paper weaving. Her accessible method of weaving ensured that even the youngest learners could easily follow along. Hamrah youth and Sirilak (first row, second from right) are pictured showing their weavings in bold colors and patterns.
The last day of the Spring 2025 session continued the Community Celebration. About 30 Hamrah youth and their families and friends came to take part in the gathering, which included the viewing of a gallery wall and lunch featuring Syrian/Arabic and Thai dishes. Guests spent their time engaging in self-directed artmaking and game activities, such as drawing, miniature painting, and puzzles.
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Fall 2022 - Spring 2024
Fall 2022, protest banner making workshop led by Nazafarin Lotfi
Exploring different contemporary political artists, the participants were encouraged to create their own protest signs which were later used in local protests and gatherings.
Fall 2022, Expanded Landscape a one-day mixed media workshop led by Grace Rosario Perkins and Yvette Serrano.
The artists and participants created wearable artwork, and prints as embodied landscapes by using repeated patterns, text, and guided painting techniques. Participants chose to work individually or collaboratively in response to the prompts about our relationships to land and belonging. What does it look like to be with the land and to be on the land? How does it feel to be on land we know versus land we do not? How can we be guests and how can we be purveyors?
Spring 2023, workshop and field trip to Tucson Museum of Art, led by Mariana Pegno and Laila Halaby.
Field trip through Downtown Tucson, Spring 2024.
Fall 2024
The Fall 2024 session of Hamrah Arts Club, Tucson chapter, was themed “We Belong” and focused on collaborative and exploratory artmaking and games. In one session, learners worked as a small group to explore a drawing technique called frottage, which uses a pencil to transfer the texture of the underlying surface to the paper. Frottage was a low-pressure and engaging way to make art while leaving room for conversations to come up between learners.
Another example of collaborative artmaking. Introduced in the first workshop and worked on until the last day of the session, the banner was treated like a canvas for doodling and free drawing/painting. Sometimes learners would work on it at the start of the workshop as a creativity warm-up, or at the end as a way to close out the day as a group.
Fall 2024 session ended with a community celebration day, with the purpose of inviting parents and friends of Hamrah youth to the education space and activate family engagement. Mariel (standing) opened the celebration with Lotería, a popular Mexican card game similar to bingo. As the deck of cards were read out loud in Spanish, Mexican guests helped out Syrian guests by pointing at the pictures on their playing boards.