The Bradbury Art Museum (BAM) hosted another of its regular photography workshops on Saturday. The focus of the workshop was on still life photos of everyday objects.

Still lifes are works of art that feature inanimate objects as their main subject matter. They are often commonplace items arranged in a specific way according to the artist’s vision. 

This workshop took a unique spin on the idea and comprised scenes with cheap plastic objects one could find around the house or at the dollar store.

Paden DeVita, BAM’s Education Coordinator, said everything that was done at the event could be done at home just as easily.

“That accessibility thing is super important to us, something we want to try to encourage as we’re doing these, so that if you really do want to go home and do this, you can,” DeVita said.

The event started by giving participants time to explore the museum and its latest collection, STIL/LEVEN, STILL/EVEN. Then, DeVita and BAM Educator Savannah Sifford led the group to the BAM Workshop, where four unique scenes were set up to photograph. Each scene consisted of various plastic toys or objects of one respective color (red, yellow, green, and white) staged together. 

DeVita then passed out cameras for each participant to use, explaining different ways to view the subject matter through the lenses. After this, students were set free to explore the space, take photos, and color in the black and white prints. 

These photography workshops are free and open to the public. DeVita said keeping events free and public is a big part of BAM’s mission. 

“Workshops are a way to provide accessibility to the arts for anybody that wants to come in and try them. We don’t have any age restrictions and we try to make them as available as possible. They’re always free and mostly on the weekends.” DeVita said.

While BAM focuses a lot of outreach towards the Jonesboro community, it also spreads the arts to Arkansas State students. 

Ada-Kay Banks, a sophomore studio art major from Hope, Arkansas, was one of the students who attended the event.

“I’m not a photography student. I don’t know much about photography, but it’s really cool. And this is a nice, easy, free way to experience something new,” Banks said.

BAM’s next photography workshop will be Oct. 18 at 2 p.m. and will focus on creating digital collage with Adobe Photoshop.

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