The Art Center is celebrating its 30 th  birthday this Saturday with a big birthday bash, and you’re invited!   This fun and free event has something for all ages, so it’s the perfect day to come out with the family and enjoy some creative birthday activities. For adults, we have demos from several of our adult class instructors, free try-it classes for drawing and watercolor, adult improv party games, and Art Center Bingo for prizes. For the young and young at heart, we hav

When we think of printing in the modern era, we’re more likely to envision fighting with a machine that refuses to work before a deadline due to “low toner” than we are to think about art. It’s easy these days to take for granted the ability to reproduce text and images, but the art of printmaking has been an incredibly powerful tool  for communicating ideas, information, and emotion throughout history. Printmaking started in ancient times with woodcuts, with the earliest kno

Today, February 27, The Art Center officially turns 30 years old! We started in 1996 as a tiny community art center renting out a single room of the historic Warsaw School , which had been saved and renovated by Mark Burkhalter. Johns Creek didn't exist back then, so we were first known as the Ocee Arts Center. The area looked very different at the time, a far-flung and under-served spot in the north of Fulton County. The Art Center sprung up out of the need for more communit

Venus of Dolní Věstonice  Ceramics are an art form that have been around since the Neolithic era, quietly impacting our civilization’s development and acting as a vital record of ancient cultures. Humanity has been crafting things out of clay since at least 28,000 BCE, when the Venus of Dolní Věstonice  (the oldest known ceramic piece in the world) was created. Functional clay vessels do not appear to have been developed until much later than this ancient sculpture. Some of t

Taking part in juried exhibitions is an important step in many artists’ careers. It gives you an opportunity to start making connections with galleries, curators, jurors, and other artists. It also gets your work seen by collectors, builds your name in the community, and sometimes even nets you a sale or a ribbon! The exhibitions you take part in can be put on an artists’ CV, as can any of your awards and recognitions. Proof of past exhibition experience gives you greater cre

There are so many ways to connect with your partner at The Art Center, and a lot of them are free!

Artist Ric Skees has been a fixture around The Art Center for many years, perfecting his craft in the Clay Studio, offering classes on advanced watercolor techniques, and acting as a juror for one of our exhibitions. Now his impressive body of multimedia work is on display at The Art Center in a poignant retrospective of the last 30 years of his artistic career. A self-portrait of Ric Skees   Ric Skees is a “self-proclaimed ‘recovering architect’” now pursuing his “Renaissan

Happy 2026! It’s hard to believe another year has already come and gone at The Art Center, but what a year it was! With 56 outreach programs, 52 workshops, more than 70 camps, 166 classes, and art enrichment in 8 local elementary schools, we have been very busy! With the additional gallery exhibitions, receptions, and special events, we’ve had a ton of fun throughout the year.   Exhibitions The Art Center hosts gallery exhibitions in six locations, including four off-site ga