TREMAIN SMITH Email: look@tremainsmith.com Community Arts Projects
Alongside her studio work, Tremain lectures, leads community workshops and teaches art through various venues in the Philadelphia area. She has taught art classes at the Penn Alexander School, the Jubilee School and the University City Arts League in West Philadelphia.In the summer of 2009, Tremain taught art at Al Bustan Seeds of Culture, a a non-profit organization dedicated to educating youth in Arabic language, arts, and culture and promoting understanding and respect both within the diverse community of Arab-Americans and among children and youth of all ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds. She led the students in a book arts project based on the Arabic alphabet and the visual diagrams of 11th century Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham.
In spring 2009, she taught a series of workshops sponsored by Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture combining encaustic painting techniques with the ancient art of Arabic calligraphy. These workshops were hosted by University City Arts League. Students created a collective piece entitled "Nahnu Al-Amal" or "We are the Hope" which has been on display at State Senator James Roebuck's office and the Walnut Street West branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Through The Center for Emerging Visual Artists' Hand-in-Hand program, Tremain taught encaustic painting to students at the Northern Home for Children in July and August 2009. She currently conducts a series of art workshops for an after-school program for residents of People's Emergency Center, an agency serving homeless families, and teaches children at the Lutheran Settlement House through this program
Tremain was one of eight Philadelphia area artists to receive a community-based fellowship through the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in partnership with New Courtland Elder Services. During the summer of 2008, she developed an intergenerational art project in which seventh grade students and residents at the Kearsley Retirement Community in West Philadelphia worked together to create two large encaustic panels to be exhibited in an exhibition entitled Art is Ageless. The panels are to hang permanently in the halls of the Retirement Community.
In the spring of 2008, she taught the encaustic painting process to middle school students at the Penn Alexander School. To tie into their academic studies of Africa that year, the inspiration for their images was taken from the Yoruba deities of West Africa. She will continue to teach this process in the 2008-09 academic year as part of a community arts program designed as a response to the elimination of art in the school curriculum due to budget cuts in the Philadelphia public schools.
In 2005 and 2006 Tremain held a series of one-day workshops on the encaustic process in her West Philadelphia studio.
Tremain engaged in a two-year study of the visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance with students at Jubilee School which culminated in an outdoor mural funded by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in the spring of 2004.
In the fall of 2004, while an artist-in-residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC, Tremain taught the Charlotte Mecklenburg public school art teachers the encaustic process to take back to their students. She also led an encaustic project with people who were currently homeless in the city of Charlotte through the Urban Ministry Center's Art Works program.
She was selected for an Art Futures artist residency in 2003, a joint project of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the School District of Philadelphia and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia Office of Catholic Schools. She worked with high school students at the Parkway Program Center City to develop both individual encaustic pieces and two large collaborative panels. These panels were awarded grand prize at the Art Futures reception at the Philadelphia Art Museum.
In 2002, Tremain was visiting Artist-in-Residence at the Westtown School in Westtown, Pennsylvania. With her electric frying pan, heat gun, travel iron and 10 pounds of beeswax, students in the Lower School developed two large encaustic collage paintings during her visit that hang in the school's lobby.
She has conducted encaustic workshops for the community outreach program at the Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, a non-profit, community-based gallery in West Philadelphia.
Smith is trained in mural arts by the Philadelphia Department of Recreation Mural Arts Program (MAP). MAP is a public art program that works in partnership with community residents, grassroots organizations, government agencies, educational institutions, corporations and philanthropies to design and create murals while actively engaging youth in the process.