Botanical Watercolors - a workshop with artist Chelsea Michal Garter

Hello painterly friends!

We invite you to join the glass house community as local artist Chelsea Michal Garter teaches us to capture the botanical world through the beautiful and often bewildering medium of watercolor.

This workshop is a great for absolute beginners or anyone grow as an artist. Chels will explain her approach of observation, demonstrate several watercolor techniques, and you'll depart with your very own water color composition.

about the workshop

This workshop is an intro to watercolors for first-timers as well as those wishing to further develop their skills. We'll explore some basic terminology, watercolor techniques, and color mixing while working to complete a watercolor composition.

what's included

Tickets for this workshop are $75 which includes all the supplies you'll need, including: paint, brushes, and water color paper. We'll set up glass in the glass house with enough space to move around and see from different angles. You'll leave with your own original painting, new friends, and inspiration to keep trying your hand at watercolor painting.

We'll include some nibbles and beverages to help power our creative efforts too : )

*You may want to bring your own apron and comfortable clothes that aren't too precious. We are working with paint after all!*

about Chelsea

"It’s plain and simple, really. I had no choice but to become an artist. I was placed in a long line of brains that have to exude talent from their fingers whether that be by paint, camera, by worship, by music, by drawing, bleaching articles of clothing, koi ponds, delivering mail, or planting enormous amounts of bulbs every spring, you name it, our family dabbled in it. Just so happens, God gave me paint. I like paint. I like the way it smells and gets in your fingernails and ends up on all of your favorite clothes. I love that it drips & mingles & the way oils look right next to each other.

"I also studied photography. Mostly the kind that you do in a very dark room where you hope you don’t run into other people or where you learn people by the inflection in their voices or the shape of their waste (as you bump around) and not their face. My true love though, if i am honest is paint and writing. You can find my blog here. Besides those forms of art, I spend time doing hair. I have walking canvases… canvases that have all sorts of different hair, clients with pet pigs, or love to kayak, or clients who were brought to America by Mother Theresa herself, clients who love change or never change their hair or really only come in for the head massage, rather than the company. More than most things, I pride myself in the grace God has given me to get to stand next to my husband as he applauds me in my ideas and my crazy adventures and as he pushes me to grow in the talents God has given me. We travel together which gives me inspiration, we live in a crinkly little beautiful home in a far-from-perfect neighborhood on the grand river which floods every year, that I cannot describe to you how much i’m in love with. our house is small and the electric in the back bedroom never got finished to completion and I still want to eventually iron my curtains, but and i am learning that in every situation I want to say thank you. I am surrounded by friends and family that I could not do this life without. mostly, I give all credit to Jesus who has saved me and given me perfect hope for the future. I hope that in all of my work– paint, writing, people, & hair–it all tells the story of Jesus because he has walked me to where I am now. I heart you."

about your hosts and the glass house

It's our belief that we're all co-creators with a deep need to create and be known. As Mako Fujimura would say, our creating is an act of love. When we love, we create, and when we create, we love.

We've transformed a century old glass house into a space where we can experience the joy of creating in community. In doing so, we open ourselves up to the possibility of transformation into people of greater love and joy.

We've hosted many different types of workshops here: modern floral design, photography--and the business of photography, relationships and the enneagram, acrylic painting, and sourdough bread baking.

We look forward to creating together!

With love,

Chris & Becky

Shout out for the lovely pics of Chels from @jendoornbosphotography and class shots from @cassie.kieda