Community Garden Art Class

Thanks to the generosity of Bedford Community Health Foundation and its vision of community health as encompassing more than hospitals and medicine, the Sedalia Center was able to offer a class in watercolor still life painting to volunteers in a Master Gardeners pollinator garden project at the Center. Funding for the class was included in a grant award for the installation of the garden, a joint project of the Sedalia Center, BCHF, and BAMGA.

The class, led by well-known Bedford artist Revelle Hamilton, was a basic introduction to watercolor painting; its subject matter the flowers and plants in the eight beds of the garden, which was planted this season in beds built by Eagle Scouts from Troop 638, which meets at and is sponsored by the Sedalia Center.

Expanding the domestic art of horticulture to an exercise in the fine art of watercolor painting is a first step in developing a broad-spectrum arts culture at the Center rooted in the connection of all creative endeavors. Annis McCabe founded the Sedalia Center “for the Art of Living and Living Arts,” casting a wide net to allow imagination to inform both work and play.

Ms. Hamilton introduced the class to the mysteries of the color wheel and provided a chart that help students figure out how colors combined. Students arranged hardy annuals from the garden’s beds in vases and worked under the artist’s guidance. The room hummed with focused energy, and everyone learned a lot and produced a finished painting.

Ms. Hamilton’s Floral Still Life class was a smashing success, and it happened because community members worked together to produce an opportunity for learning and immersion in the arts that would otherwise not have been available.

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