 Hello, Columbia. Welcome to our edition of Telling Our Story, Exploring the Parks. I am your host, Wanda Austin Herndon. Join us as we explore our parks. Hello, Columbia, and welcome to Telling Our Story, Exploring the Parks. Today we are exploring the Columbia Art Center. We're going to talk to Ms. Boja Miller, and she's going to tell us all about the activities, the open studio and all the programming and camps they have going on here. So stay tuned and come take a walk with us at the Columbia Art Center. The Columbia Art Center moved from a small cramped art center at 1932 Calhoun Street to a 5,000 square feet facility at 1227 Taylor Street in October 2017. The Columbia Art Center is a state-of-the-art facility with the capacity to offer not only open studio but also multiple classes consecutively. We have about 5,000 square feet here and this is primarily pottery studio but we do anything art related really. Right now, of course, we're in the middle of a summer camps. We have planned nine weeks of summer camps all together. We're starting at ages five to fifteen. In addition to pottery, the opportunity is to learn about a variety of other arts including, but not limited to, basket weaving, jewelry making, book finding, paints, drawing, sewing, and many others. Claim making, painting, coloring, like a lot of art, what you can do in art. It's a nice environment, nice, quiet, friendly, so that's one of the things that kept me going because I've gotten involved in other activities where it wasn't as welcoming and so I didn't stick with it, but this place makes you feel welcome as well as having that, you know, opportunity to create. The Art Center's goal is to provide citizens of all ages activity and events for a great art experience. We also offer classes and workshops for adults and children all year around. Anything from very beginning introduction to pottery and handbuilding basics or beginning wheel throwing to very advanced classes like sculpture or intermediate handbuilding. It's going to be hard in the first like few weeks but in practice you can learn to get better and after a while it becomes a lot of fun to do these projects. It feels like an accomplishment that you have like something to show how much you want. We do offer open studio program as well. As of right now we have 113 open studio members. To become one of the members you would have to take one of our classes and then there's a waiting list. Waiting right now is about six months for the open studio. The Center further provides the program creative journey for military veterans giving them the opportunity to paint, draw or work with clay. This right here is an opportunity for you to build your creativity. Me being a disabled vet it is very like I said cathodic and stress relieving and I'm able to build up my focus skill. Because we are part of a part of City of Columbia Parks and Recreations we can afford to offer classes and our memberships for more affordable prices but also we offer a lot of scholarships as well. We believe that anybody who wants to make art should be able to do that and we try our best to make sure anybody can. This is not like when you may have a membership in a gym and you're doing your workout. When you come here and join us you become part of community and that's really beautiful. I can't stress enough how important art therapy is and that's what this has become for me and I know there's a lot of people out there with this the things that's going on in the world and whatnot that need an outlet for stress. This right here has answered a question I never knew I was asking. For more information on any of the programs that you heard about today at the Columbia Art Center please call 803-545-3093. So thank you Columbia for joining us today at the Columbia Art Center and please stay tuned for our next episode of Telling Our Story Exploring the Parks. As with all our parks our mission here at the City of Columbia Parks and Recreation is to change lives through a culture of transformational leadership innovation and phenomenal customer service. Thank you for joining us today and please join us in the future for more episodes of Telling Our Story Exploring the Parks and remember we are Columbia.