A downtown Sarnia art gallery is offering a free avatar-making workshop Family Day.
Using dolls that have had their facial features scrubbed with nail polish remover, mother-daughter duo Sarah Whalls and Audrey Edwards will be leading a 1-3 pm program about how to create new versions at the Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery.
Edwards is a “whiz” at the craft, said Anna Miccolis, community art and education coordinator at the gallery.
“She makes over her dolls and even gives them attributes that resemble her family,” Miccolis said.
Participants also create outfits and accessories for their personal avatars, that could be versions of themselves in the future, as a game character or something else, gallery officials said in a news release.
A piece in the current From Skyworld to Cyberspace exhibition by Skawennati that features a corn husk doll, Barbie doll and a virtual three-dimensional rendering were also part of the inspiration for the Feb. 20 activity, Miccolis said.
The gallery has dolls available for participants to use, or people can bring their own, she said.
Family Day tends to be busy at the gallery, she said.
“It’s definitely become a day when people want to visit the gallery, bring their kids, participate in some art making, and so we’re happy to be able to do that.”
The drop-in session is similar to Family Saturday art workshops that recently summarized.
The weekend art workshops that used to be Family Sundays were paused at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and resumed, on Saturdays, late last month, Miccolis said.
The main difference besides the change from Sundays to Saturdays is the same theme is now offered multiple weekends in a row, Miccolis said, so people can attend when it’s more convenient for them.
“So that people aren’t hopefully feeling such a crunch and hustle to get in here and participate in these activities.”
A Circuit Trees workshop based on the Skawennati exhibition continues for the rest of the month, then Monoprint Shop starts in March. Details are at jnaag.ca.
A decision was made in 2021 to align the days the gallery was open with museums and other cultural places in the county, county cultural services general manager Andrew Meyer said.
The gallery is changing to be open Sundays between Victoria Day weekend and Labor Day, to accommodate increased tourism, Meyer said. It closes again on Sundays in the off season.