Crazy, Exploring, Art.

Jessica Hughes expects her upcoming art class to be a fun, open, new experience. She hopes that by encouraging kids to use alternative tools, they will learn to open their minds.

Just how alternative?

Combs, toothbrushes and q-tips instead of paint brushes, for starters.

But there’s a method to her madness. “When you’re in high school they’re going to teach you about perspective, looking, drawing still life and objects,” she says. While that’s proper for a classroom setting, her goal is to have kids use “non-traditional media” so that they will begin to “think in more abstract way.”

Hughes also has the students work on paper, not canvasses. When a student sees a canvas, she says, they think they need to create “a masterpiece.” Paper has “much less pressure” and kids feel free to take risks.

Add acrylic paint, stencils, letters, collage paper and glue, and you’ve got lots of avenues of exploration.

Hughes knows what she’s talking about. Currently a teacher in the Lynn elementary schools, Hughes received her BSA in Fine Art from Montserrat College of Art in 2008, and is currently taking graduate classes at Salem State University.

She designed a mixed media class because that’s her personal choice of media. With her busy work and class schedule, time for her personal work suffers. She says she gets perhaps “one day a month” and then she works for hours at a time.

Federally funded by the Institute of Media and Library Services, as administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioner, this class is open to all teens. For more information or to register for this free class, please call Sandy Moltz, Swampscott Public Library’s Teen Librarian, at 781 596-8867, ext. 304.

You can check out Hughes' work at:    http://jessicalhughes.blogspot.com/