June 15, 2024
Saturday Open Studio
Saturday
June 15, 2024
1 - 4 pm
Bertucci Education Studio
Stop by the Bertucci Education Studio and join us for lively drop-in, art-making activities inspired by the Gardner collection. Projects vary each month and explore a variety of skills, materials, and processes, including painting and sketching, printmaking, and book arts.
Explore the world of zines (or mini magazines) and use collage, drawing, and other techniques to tell your own story in this activity designed by Polly Thayer Starr Visiting Studio Artist Des Bennett.
About the Artist
Photo by Hakeem Adewumi
Des Bennett (they/them) is a cultural worker whose practice emphasizes creativity and storytelling as central to community care, social wellness, and QTBIPOC+ liberation. They are a collage artist, zine maker, drag performer, dramaturg, director, facilitator, fiber artist, and producer currently working as the Queer (Re)Public Programs Manager at The Theater Offensive. Des is a co-leader of Gender Explosion, a coalition of trans artists across the country empowering, advocating for, and creating space for trans artists in the performing arts sector, and has led trans inclusion workshops in Boston and on Broadway. Their recent directing work includes: The Interrobangers (Assoc. Dir., Company One); Grief Love (Co-Conceiver & Dir.); True Colors Troupe (TTO); we and other goddexxes (C1); Sunday Swings an Old-New Gospel (Huntington); Common Ground: Revisited (Ass. Dir., Hunt.); My Body Is a A Season (SpeakEasy); and Scenes From Metamorphoses (Northeastern University). They have held Research Assistantships with Dani Snyder-Young PhD on her projects, Theatre participation and arts-integrated peer leadership in substance addiction recovery processes (2019) and Digital performance, wellness, and equity (2020), and contributed to Procedurally authored performances of mindful practice: Theatre-for-one, audience labor and self-optimization (TDR, 2022). Des holds a BA in Theater and a minor in Psychology from Northeastern University.
Studio activities are made possible by the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust. The Museum is also supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which receives support from the State of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Polly Thayer Starr (1904-2006) was an accomplished artist who captured the culture and whimsy of her native Boston with a unique combination of detail, emotion, and curiosity. For more, visit the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust online at www.pollythayerstarr.org.
