Spring semester at Oxygen
Photo: Submitted
Gesture drawing on paper, Marceline Tanguay, 2026.
The city’s artist-run art centre is now open for registration for its spring semester.
Registration is taking place from March 30 to June 20 at Oxygen Art Centre’s downtown facility, as well as online, with classes in poetry, drawing and printmaking.
Programs like “Life Drawing” and “Working from a Model” return with new classes exploring costumed short-pose life drawing with local animator Marceline Tanguay, said Oxygen executive director, Julia Prudhomme, and an introduction to cyanotype image-making with local artist Natasha Bucheit.
Oxygen’s education program has offered professional art classes to adults and youth for over 22 years, said Prudhomme.
“The program is unique as it is developed and taught by established, professional local artists and art educators who share their skills and advanced education with the community,” she said.
The spring semester is broken into two parts, where students can sign-up for two different blocks of “Life Drawing” and the studio critique class, “Art Speak” with Emilie Leblanc Kromberg, Prudhomme said.
Running over five and six weeks each, “the sections provide new and returning students with myriad opportunities to engage in creative praxis,” she said.
Part one from March 30 to May 15, consists of weekly sessions in life drawing, papier mache animal masks, Art Speak, sketch booking and “Dreaming into Poetry” classes. There’s also and single workshops to work from a professional model in any medium, make instruments from trash and learn basic techniques for cyanotype image-making.
Part two from May 19 to June 20, features life drawing and Art Speak, with additional weekly and one-day workshops on printmaking, colour and composition, collaging with personal photos, Chinese calligraphy and drawing from the spring garden and in nature at a series of local parks.
In addition to in-person classes, Oxygen hosts two online classes held via Zoom — “The Art of Submission: Submitting Creative Writing to Periodicals” with Susan Andrews Grace, and “Be Not Afeard: A Poetry Workshop for Beginners” with Rayya Liebich.
Learn about the classes and instructors on Oxygen’s website. Classes are small to create a dynamic experience for each student, but they fill up quickly, Prudhomme said.
Part one of the spring semester is now open for registration, while part two will be open for registration by Feb. 25. Additional classes and events will be announced on a rolling basis.
Interested participants can register to attend each class by signing up online through Google Forms.
As a non-profit artist-run centre, Oxygen relies on minimum registration to pay professional artist instructor rates and to ensure enough time for instructors and staff to prepare for the class, Prudhomme said.