Open Studio Saturdays
Open Studio Saturdays are a fun and unique way to spend time with your family while meeting new people and exploring artmaking and ideas. These drop-in sessions take place every Saturday in the Tuey Art Studio at the Gibson and they are always free!
Come experiment with a wonderful array of media and techniques. Previously, we’ve painted self-portraits, sculpted tree spirits in clay, collaged mountains out of carboard, made suncatchers with everyday treasures, and woven tapestries of yarn and found materials. And your appetite for creative exploration is always supported by an artist-mentor. So, dress for mess and follow your curiosity!
All ages are welcome. The activities are designed to be accessible to children, but you don’t have to be a kid to participate.
Please note: Children under the of 15 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian in the Tuey Art Studio.
Lockers and stroller parking available.
When: Saturdays, Drop in style, 12–4pm (except when the Gibson is closed for exhibition installation)
Where: Tuey Art Studio (and Audain and Karasawa Courtyard when weather permits)
Who: All ages and abilities are welcome.
Past Open Studio Saturdays
May 2, 2026 - Sunlight Shadows and Full Moon Flowers
Today we collaborate with the SUN, tracing shadows that are created by its light.
We are also inspired by the MOON! Did you know there was a full moon yesterday and it was called the Flower Moon? We’ll make moon prints using air dry clay texture impressions and white paint, and transform them into flowers with pastels and collage.
April 25, 2026 - Layered Landscapes
In Hannah Rickards’ prints, she layers drawings on top of photographs of locations in different parts of the world. Today, we’re creating our own layered landscapes, using watercolor and transparency sheets.
Imagine, remember, or observe a landscape or place. Paint this place on watercolor paper.
While your painting is drying, start drawing on your transparency sheet.
Without looking at your painting, think about that place in your mind. What memories come up? What objects, symbols, or shapes do you associate with that place? Fill different parts of your sheet with drawings.
Finally, lay your transparency over your painting – see how your layers combine! Are there unexpected similarities or differences? Parts that line up or connect? Parts that create a funny or strange image?
April 18, 2026 - Observe and Collage
Today we’re making collages of what we see in the world around us!
Look around you. What is something you notice? A tree, a cloud, or a mountain outside? An art supply inside the studio? A chair, building, lamppost, or bus? An everyday object, or a special item, that you carried with you to the museum today? Look closely at it. What kind of shapes do you see? What colors are part of your object?
Visit the colorful paper buffet and select some paper scraps in colors that match (or don’t match!) what you observed. Many of these papers have interesting textures and patterns because they were cut out of recycled magazines. Does the texture of the paper you chose match the texture of what you’re collaging? Or does it create a surprising contrast?
April 11, 2026 - Connect-the-Dot Impressions
Today we are collecting texture impressions with clay and using them as stamps to make prints. Inspired by Maggie Groat, who uses the format of visual games (like dot-to-dot!) in her artwork, we’ll turn our own art into a game – by connecting the “dots” you’ve stamped onto your page! Try using straight lines, curvy lines, dotted lines, or any type of line you can imagine. You might connect the dots more than once in a different order, or connect them again using a different color.
What kind of shape emerges when you connect the dots? Does it remind you of anything? Try trading your dots with someone else and connecting the dots that they made!
April 4, 2026 - Overlapping Outlines, Layered Traces
Today we have transparency sheets and tracing paper to work on—both materials you can see through. What can we see? How can we layer and overlap our traces and outlines? You can lay either of these materials over still images from Hannah’s video, Figure Ground, and trace what you see! Try moving the image around and tracing it again, or layer traces of a different image on top of the drawing you made.
What else can we trace that we see in the world around us? Try tracing patterns and shapes you find in the studio or even on your own clothes. You can also trace your own reflection in a mirror!
March 28, 2026 - World in Motion: Flip Books
Movement is always happening, all around us. Today, inspired by movement in the natural world, we’ll create our own moving images in the form of flip books!
In Hannah Rickards’ artwork, she uses an infrared motion-activated camera to record different kinds of movement from different animals, plants, and even the wind. What are other things in nature that move, shift, and change shape?
March 21, 2026 - Pattern, Cut, Collage
Maggie Groat makes collages out of old magazines and publications. Many of the papers she chooses to make her collages have interesting patterns and textures. Today, let’s create our own patterns, cut them up, and use them to make collages! We are also beginning to add flowers to our collaborative collage bouquet.
March 14, 2026 - Experimental Colouring Pages
Maggie Groat sometimes uses the format of classic visual games in her artwork. One of the ways she invites us to play is through her own version of coloring pages!
Let’s create our own coloring pages by making experimental drawings, and then coloring them in. We’ll use sharpies and watercolor pencils to try out fun techniques like drawing with both hands at once, drawing without looking. We’ll also make photocopies of our coloring pages to trade and let others color in!
March 7, 2026 - Monotypes with Paper Cut-outs and Tracing Perception
Today we are celebrating the opening of two new exhibitions by creating monotype prints using cut-out paper letters and images. Try rearranging your pieces to make a second “spot-the-difference” variation on your print!
This week we also begin our collaborative window drawing: tracing what we see outside the studio window, ON the window!
February 7, 2026 - Rain Portraits
Today we collaborate with rain to create portraits expressing how the rain makes us feel. After using felt markers, watercolour pencil crayons, and paint powder, we'll set our drawings out under the rain and expose them for different amounts of time, and tilting and smudging them. Where else has this water been, before touching our papers today? What other animals have touched it before us? What plants will grow this summer, having drunk this rain?
Liz Magor’s portraits, in the current exhibition, were made in a similar way, except she exposed her paper to sunlight to create cyanotypes: the paper sheets were coated with a special paint made of iron, which then transforms, becoming dark blue when the wherever the sun shines on the paper, and revealing her portraits.
January 31, 2026 - Rolling Meditation
Jin-me Yoon’s video installation artwork in the Gibson's media gallery features a musician playing a hypnotic rhythm on the walls of a special kind of building called a bunker. It’s a kind of meditation.
Today, we'll make our own meditations using printmaking. Glue string and foam to a cardboard paper roll, add paint, and roll it out. Enjoy using the repetitive rolling print to slow down your thoughts and think of big questions.
January 24, 2026 - Impressive Texture Walk
Today we are collecting textures with clay and then using them as stamps to make prints. What's under your feet? Touch surfaces with your hand. How's it feel? This is an old mountain. How do you think these textures have changed over time? Think of all the rain, and feet, and beaks that have punctured, scratched, and rubbed the surfaces you are touching.
January 17, 2026 - Tree Spirit Self-Portraits
Hanging above the Gibson’s fireplace is a forest of kodama created by Cindy Mochizuki. In Japanese mythology, these tree spirits live in and around trees and they protect the forest.
Look at each of their faces! Look at their different bodies! Can you guess how they’re feeling? Are any of them dancing? Sleeping? Singing?
Today, you're invited to make a tree spirit portrait by painting over a photo of yourself expressing an emotion. Starting from your facial expression, turn yourself into a pinecone, flower bud, or other forest element that you find outside.
January 10, 2026 - Life of a Dish Rack
In response to Lucien Durey's Dishwashing Hymn, today we observe and paint portraits of everyday objects. The studio is set up with an elaborate display of fruit, construction equipment, take out containers, branches, rocks, pinecones, a rubber chicken, and—yes—even a dishrack and scrubbing brush. Come make a still life composition using tempera paint to show us how you see these objects.
December 13, 2025 - Offering Dish
This week, we will make a special dish, as a way of reflecting on Lucien Durey's work, currently exhibited at the Gibson. Come use air-dried clay to make a plate for someone you want to honour—maybe a friend, family, mentor, or other special person in your life. As always, all ages are invited to participate and collaborate!
December 6, 2025 - Still More Mountain
Our mountain keeps growing as we add more layers. We have bicycles, a cave, a birdwatcher, a snowboard park. We poured inky streams down one side. What else will you add to this sculpture? This Saturday, Kimberly Phillips, the Gibson's director, will help you in the studio.
November 29, 2025 - More Mountain
Last Saturday, we started making a mountain sculpture. We drew bears, painted cardboard birds, collaged trees, and glued down yarn streams. But we all decided we're not done yet. Come help us layer on more details. Add more trails, more bikes, more hikers, and whatever else you think is missing.
November 22, 2025 - Collaged Mountain
The thing that we call a mountain is made of dirt and rocks, plants and trees, animals and insects, water and air, and of course people! There are many layers that make up a mountain and they are always moving over time! Can we peel the layers apart and think about them as we make a collage? Lhuḵw’lhuḵw’áyten is the Squamish placename for the area also know as Burnaby Mountain and Barnett Marine Park, and it means, "where the bark gets peeled in the Spring." Come stick the layers together and make your collaged interpretation of this mountain. As always, materials will be provided and you are invited to bring anything your find at home or on your way to the museum.
November 15, 2025 - Clay Spirits
Recently, artist Cindy Mochizuki taught us how to make Kodama (tree spirits) out of clay. It was so much fun that Pietro, or Curator of Learning, wants to try it again. Come get your hands dirty and discover which forest spirits are living inside the clay we have in the cupboards here in the museum.
November 8, 2025 - Collaborative Drawing
This session is led by Pietro Sammarco, the Gibson Art Museum's Curator of Learning, and will involve the practising of shared techniques for drawing!
What happens when more than one brain draws one picture? What happens when 3 hands take turns marking a piece of paper? Let's see what fun and unexpected pictures we can come up with together. Come meet other people and share your gift of drawing with each them, layering our different ideas on the page.
November 1, 2025 - With Our Hands
This session honours Debra Sparrow’s practice of carrying forward ancestral knowledge through the act of weaving. Facilitator Karen Thảo La will guide participants in creating simple woven wall hangings using cardboard looms, yarn, and bamboo — a traditional weaving material from her motherland, Vietnam. Together, we’ll explore rhythm, colour, and texture.
Note: this session differs from the past “Woven Time” workshop, resulting in a weaving that can be taken off the loom and hung on found twigs or a wooden dowel.
October 25, 2025 - Everyday Treasures
Karen Thảo La invites you to collect and bring small treasures from your surroundings: petals, leaves, and other tiny finds that have already fallen on the ground, photos, or anything else small and relatively flat. Together, we’ll create a suncatcher: an artwork that plays with transparency by layering materials to celebrate the beauty of everyday wonders and small joys, inspired by the work of Lucien Durey. Don’t worry if you can’t collect treasures; a variety of materials will be provided.
October 18, 2025 - Blue Portraits
Create a self-portrait on pre-exposed sun paper — an image that will slowly shift and change over time. Your portrait could represent you or the things you love and keep close, reflecting memories that make you who you are. This process echoes Liz Magor’s Blue Students series, which uses the cyanotype process to explore how light reveals and conceals.
October 11, 2025 - Woven Time
Inspired by the work of exhibiting artists Sameer Farooq and Jared Stanley, you are invited to weave with the Gibson’s own museum conservation materials—from bubble wrap to tissue paper—alongside yarn, to create your own “mini-museum” tapestry. Each unique creation becomes a living archive of your visit to the Gibson.
October 4, 2025 - Dissolving Edges
Imagine the “coordinates” of your home — the colours, symbols, and shapes that represent where you feel most yourself. Then explore the dreamlike, layered world of Patrick Cruz’s installations, using printed sections of his work as a starting point for intuitive mark-making, dissolving the boundaries between your world and his.
September 27, 2025 - Watercolours in the studio!
With a focus on playing with materials and process, artist Liz Toohey-Wiese offers an exploration with watercolour paint, composition, and questions of place, which she developed for the collaborative project Where Does the Rain Go?, featured in the Gibson’s inaugural exhibition Edge Effects. Participants will work with traditional quilting templates to transform simple paintings into new and creative assemblages.
