Davis Art Center spreads the joy of art during COVID

PHOTO: The Davis Art Center worked to provide art kits for local elementary-aged children.

By Declan Fee,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

The Davis Art Center has long been a staple in the community of this small town, providing art-intensive camps and classes for people of all ages. But when COVID-19 hit, they needed to adjust to life without access to in-person teaching.

In March of 2020, Art Center Executive Director, Stacie Frerichs, and program manager, Stacey Vetter, were in the heat of planning for spring and summer programming, when all of the sudden, they were forced to close down and cancel all classes in the foreseeable future.

“At that point, most of our revenue came from in-person programming, so the decision to close was very difficult,” Frerichs said.

Still hoping to provide fun and entertainment to the community while shut down, both Frerichs and Vetter released weekly emails with at-home art projects, artist profiles, and upcoming art events.

The staff then needed to figure out what virtual summer camps would be like, trying to keep kids engaged and having fun, through Zoom.

“The first camp we did was all virtual, there were videos we had made for the kids and we also put together art kits to follow along with,” Vetter said. “We did five take-home art kits that included drawing in color, drawing in black and white, painting, collage, and clay,” Frerichs added.
These art kits would become the Art Center’s prominent money-maker throughout the pandemic.

“The Davis School Arts Foundation came to us and said that they would like to do something within the schools to bring elementary children art,” Frerichs said. “This experience with art kits and art emails got us thinking about what a comprehensive art curriculum would look like, that can be done at home or in the classroom.”

They distributed 600 of these kits to all elementary schools in Davis in the spring of the 2020- 2021 school year, and eventually to schools in Vacaville and Elk Grove, in February of 2022.

Looking forward, COVID-19 will place less of a burden on the Art Center’s programming, as they will be holding seven weeks of full-day camps over the summer.

“We are going to focus on painting and drawing, but with a big variety of activities and mediums, we explore. There will be small class sizes … and all of the projects will be taught by teaching artists,” Frerichs said.

Without help from the community, things may have looked different for the art center during this trying time, but fortunately, the community was very supportive.

“The community donated much of the registration fees to the art center … to help sustain us as a non-profit,” Frerichs said.