The Department of Regional Art Workers was conceived as an intergenerational, interdisciplinary arts community providing access to the arts, in midtown, Kingston, NY. Our project space offers a print studio, work, event and, meeting space. The D.R.A.W. community currently includes, P.U.G.G. alumni artists, work study students, local artists and, community members interested in providing access to the Arts and quality community arts education.
D.R.A.W. 2022 Art Classes
The D.R.A.W. has hosted art classes and programs in our space for all ages, including: drawing, painting, printmaking, paper mache, filmmaking, animation, fashion, and marbling. Local art educators with experience in these fields offered themselves again and again to the art of teaching. The D.R.A.W. is proud to continue providing these classes and displaying many of the created artworks from them in our own space.
Members of PUGG have worked as assistants to art educators throughout each of these classes. They have helped set up, clean up, and tend to the needs of every class. The pictures shown below have all been taken from our own PUGGsters.
Occhiolino, October 2022
Throughout the summer and into autumn, PUGG worked with Sophi Kravitz to fulfill our visions of our own personal little worlds. Adorned in flowers of paper, each member of PUGG created their own small world reflective of their perspective. They were on display in the Pinkwater Gallery for the duration of O+ Positive, with every little detail available to view with binoculars.
Second Annual Draw-a-thon, August 2022
The Draw-A-Thon returned in 2022 with a grand attendance. Like last time, guests were free to draw on the floors, walls, and windows as they pleased. Some new facilities were introduced on top of previous ones, including a collage station, a cardboard fridge to put up smaller drawings and a “Cabinet of Curiosities” full of odd little things and facts about them to draw from. The PUGGs worked with Soapbox Derby veteran Felix Olivieri to construct the Draw-A-Ton 2.0, a new and improved model of the previous drawing robot.
Tote bags, t-shirts designed by Maizy Milliken, and buttons designed by PUGGster Nick Carroll were available to purchase during the event, sold to support what we do here.
Tang Teaching Museum Trip, June 2022
Among many field trips that PUGG has gone on throughout 2022, one was a visit to the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York. On display were two shows: Ruby Sky Stiler’s “New Patterns,” and “On Their Own Terms” featuring artists that lived in the late nineteenth and/or twentieth centuries in the United States.
Whoop Dee Doo, May 2022
Throughout May, a select few PUGGsters worked with the traveling performance group Whoop Dee Doo in crafting a show for Kingston’s Maritime Museum. Said PUGGsters also performed in the show, getting a taste for what it’s like to be on stage and entertain an audience. One member even got the opportunity to travel with them and help them with a show in San Francisco.
Eco Arts Week, April 2022
Between April 9th and 16th, the D.R.A.W. hosted a multitude of free workshops and presentations themed around ecology, recycling, and preserving the natural world. At the beginning, puzzle pieces decorated with healthy words to live by were made by multiple artistic minds and arranged on a wall for an installation here at the D.R.A.W.
Throughout the week attendants might find themselves creating natural inks with found objects, or learning how to foster mushrooms, or creating a habitat for bees, or printing with various pieces of “garbage.” Each workshop was informative in a different facet of our Earth. Educators in both art and the environment shared their meaningful perspectives and solutions for the problems facing our piling ecosystem today.
A Merry Maker’s Day, December 2021
PUGG hosted a festive open workshop with book-binding, pin-pressing, ornament making, frame making, origami, and Christmas card printing. Guests cycled through the different stations throughout the entire event, and the joy of making was celebrated through the plentiful amount of creations.
O+ Positive Oxygen Mural, 2021
PUGG worked throughout the summer to design and create a cyanotype mural for O+ Positive that matched the theme of oxygen.
The mural includes the air, the land, and the sea, signifying that oxygen plays an essential role in each. Images and drawings made by PUGG member Nick Carroll were added to show the “everything in between,” that oxygen encompasses and fuels every part of our life.
In October, the cyanotype mural was exposed publicly in front of a small audience at the YWCA in Kingston. It was hung uptown for the duration of O+ Positive.
Draw-A-Thon, August 2021
D.R.A.W. hosted the first annual twelve-hour-long drawing extravaganza. The floors and walls were covered with paper and visitors were able to draw whatever they pleased, or following designated prompts to create large collaborative pieces with others in the community.
Visitors could attend different stations and mini events set up at the event, like a comic wall, pet portraits, a little coliseum, origami, and drawing from a live model later in the evening. The Draw-A-Thon was complete with a cardboard robot called the Draw-A-Ton, that would generate small drawings upon request. The iconic machine was designed and built by our own PUGGsters.
Hudson Valley Bee Habitat, 2021
PUGG worked with the Hudson Valley Bee Habitat, an organization with the goal of protecting and supporting the pollinators that help nature flourish.
They collaborated for several weeks, creating designs for bee homes, made to support the bee population and sustain them. PUGG members cut out stencils of various pollinators and plants, which were composed into full designs for the bee habitats.
