Please note: the program time for August’s Virtual Play Date is different from previous events.

Join us this month as we collectively explore our individual roots and envision our future!

Dive into art-making, collaborate in your household, and connect with our visiting artists this month, Jen and Gerald. What do our roots say about who we are and who we want to be? Come explore, look, create, and move as we dive into contemporary art and making.   

Virtual Play Date activities are designed for kids and their grownups to participate together (adults participating must be accompanied by a youth). Workshops will be held on Zoom and will be live and interactive. Recommended ages are provided as a guide, but you know your child best! If you have questions about a particular workshop, don’t hesitate to reach us at familyprograms@icaboston.org.

Registration is currently closed.

Live Program Schedule 

Self-Reflective Mirrors with Jen (all-ages)
2 – 3 PM EST

Colorful arts and crafts mirror with words on them.

Come explore yourself and the people who help to make you the amazing person that you are! In this hour we will stretch, share and explore the people in our lives that support us, what makes us who we are, what makes us unique, and the traits of the people we admire most. Together we will create our own unique mirrors that “reflect” who we are right now and who we hope to become.  

You’ll want to collect and bring: 

  • Cardboard (or paper) 
  • Adhesive (glue stick, liquid glue, or tape) 
  • Pencil or Pen 
  • Scissors 
  • Materials for decorating (markers, stickers, ribbon, yarn, tissue paper, aluminum foil, or other materials you have available) 
     

Narrative Portraits with Gerald (all-ages)
3:30 – 5 PM EST

A color photograph of a Black woman in a full-length purple patterned dress, standing in front of floral wallpaper and holding a West African mask over her face and a large vintage black-and-white photograph.

Xaviera Simmons, Sundown (Number Twelve), 2018. Chromogenic color print, 60 x 45 inches (152.4 x 114.3 cm). Jeanne L. Wasserman Art Acquisition Fund and Anonymous Acquisition Fund. © Xaviera Simmons

Explore your roots and envision individual or collective futures in this engaging workshop. Through a process of question & answer, experimental art installation, and digital photography, participants and family members will create (studio-style) portraits of one another that reflect family history and aspirations! 

You’ll want to collect and bring: 

  • Cell phone camera or digital camera 
  • Special clothes or garments for the photo shoot 
  • Props (this will be further described during the workshop) 
  • Wall space or backdrop for photo shoot (this will be further described during the workshop as well) 
  • Pencil and paper 
  • Digital space on computer (to upload photographs) 

 

Artist Bios: 

Jen Turpin

Jen Turpin is an Educator, Artist, Musician, Storyteller and Yogi based in Boston, Massachusetts. She loves to integrate different arts modalities into her artistic practice to create new experiences for herself and those she is interacting with. When teaching she encourages students to take risks, be independent, take up space and not second guess self-expression but instead dive deeper. She believes that we are all creators. We are educators, artists, musicians, dancers and storytellers. 

Jen’s current works tend to focus inward on breath, nature, and self-reflection. She celebrates her heroes who have been influential in her life through embroidered portrait and celebrates nature and the temporariness of seasons through mixed media embroidery pieces. 

Gerald L. Leavell II 

Gerald L. Leavell II is an interdisciplinary artist and arts educator working in multi-media/narrative-based happenings, performance lectures, 2- and 3-dimensional collage, and community arts program development. His work is rooted in self-reflection, history, intercultural exchange and pure play! 

Leavell’s physical practice is currently based in Dallas, TX, but can be virtually found from any part of the planet with Internet access. 

Your support helps keeps programs like this – both virtual and in-person – free and accessible in this time of uncertainty. If you are able, please consider becoming a member or making a one-time gift to support the ICA.

ICA Kids and Family programs are supported, in part, by Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, the Hassenfeld Family Foundation, the Willow Tree Fund, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Raymond T. & Ann T. Mancini Family Foundation. 

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