Park Open Studio: Jazz Mixed Media with Bill Buchman

Led by a local teaching artist, this drop-in class invites participants to explore creativity through hands-on artmaking under the shade of Scrabble Plaza’s trees. Past mediums have included plein-air drawing, printmaking, cyanotypes, and more. All materials are provided by WSPC.

About the Workshop

Jazzy Abstraction: Mixed Media on Paper

Each self-contained class offers a fun opportunity to explore a variety of drawing and painting materials—including pastels, watercolor, art crayons, and newer mixed media tools—while creating musically inspired abstractions on paper. Through freeing approaches to materials and process, Bill will demonstrate techniques and offer guidance as participants use line, shape, color, and gesture to express ideas and feelings inspired by music.

Using personal music selections, the sounds and atmosphere of Washington Square Park, and the energy of the moment itself, the class will explore creativity through improvisation, experimentation, and play. Each session encourages freedom, discovery, and expressive risk-taking, and everyone will complete one or more colorful abstract works on paper to take home. Students of all levels and ages are welcome, and the classes are free.

About the Artist

Bill Buchman is a New York–based painter, educator, jazz pianist, and author whose work explores the relationship between music and abstraction through a body of paintings he calls Visual Jazz. Drawing on decades of experience in both visual art and jazz performance, his work translates improvisation, rhythm, gesture, and layered structure into an expressive abstract language. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited in galleries and cultural institutions in the United States and Europe. billbuchman.com