All Emerging Artist Series are free and open to the public. RSVP required. The SBMLC Emerging Artist Workshops are a series of art-making sessions led by regional emerging artists that take place at Samuel Bak Museum: the Learning Center.

Mari Dailey - Saturday, April 5, 2-4 P.M.

After reflecting on life and dreamt perspectives, participants will learn how to create snapshot narratives. They will then draw these out on birch panels employing techniques of shading. 

Artist Bio: Mari Dailey graduated from the University of Arizona after a childhood growing up around the world. She settled in Omaha 10 years ago and built a ceramics practice. In the last few years, she began drawing on birch panels, playing with narratives and imagined landscapes.   

This is a FREE event, but preregistration is requested. You can learn more about War Games at the end of this page.

Liz Boutin - Saturday, April 26, 2-4 P.M.

After a discussion on color, emotion, and symbolism, participants use paint, markers, and pencils on an 8" x 8" canvas to visually explore a life experiences, whether from childhood or adulthood. At the end of the workshop, we will have everyone bring together their works and create a visual mural to show their unique way of expressing themselves through art. 

Artist Bio: Liz Boutin is a local artist with a BA in Art History, a BFA, and an MA in Museum Studies. She is an advocate for the healing power of art after experiencing trauma. Liz believes expressionism in art can help one process one's emotions.

This is a FREE event, but preregistration is requested.

Viy - May 3, 2-4 P.M.

Participants will be invited to bring in ‘parts of themselves’, things they’ve been holding onto, things hidden in junk drawers and trunks in the attic. We will look at the collection of objects brought in collectively, talk about the memories held within them, the stories they tell. Participants will then be invited to transform the objects they’ve brought in while discussing the cyclical process of decay, repair, and the hope one must have to work within this cycle.  

Artist Bio: Viy is a self-proclaimed refuse artist, working in refuse, refusal, and re-fusing. Their practice focuses on the history and materiality of objects, breaking them down in order to understand them so they can be reconfigured and re-contextualized as art objects. 

This is a FREE event, but preregistration is requested.

Chelsea Kavich - May 24, 2-4 P.M.

This workshop will take place after a screening of the documentary film “Fragments”. The film explores the archive as a site of geography, specifically in the aftermath of war.  What does our own personal, bodily geography look like in a world increasingly shaped by global culture & war?  Participants will focus on conversation, writing, and reflection, to look beyond the traditional linear nature of autobiography. We will explore our history through a discussion of personal recollections. 

This is a FREE event, but preregistration is requested.

About the "War Games" Exhibition (Open January 22 - June 29)

War Games explores how Bak relates his childhood experiences - from his direct renderings of the Holocaust in his watercolors from 1945 to 1948 to a selection of his contemporary paintings and drawings. Through the presentation of toys and game pieces, Bak draws our attention to the realities of childhoods spent in zones of conflict and how children are pawns used by warring parties. The exhibition will dedicate one room to historic and contemporary instances of children human rights violations. The final room of the exhibition will showcase Mr. Bak’s 2024 series Tools of the Trade. These works represent his fears for children whose lives and futures are destroyed by war and the escalation of violence in the Middle East. As much as he mourns this age of destruction, he also depicts his unending belief in humanity’s ability to mend and his hope that somehow peace and reason will triumph.