Buffalo Arts Studio education program wants to help you make the first step towards becoming an art student.

Look for free 1 day classes for youth, adults and art teachers or ask about opportunities to view classes in session and talk with our teachers and students.

We are confident once you come you will want to return.

Program Overview

Our arts education program has provided professional arts training to youth, adults and professional artist for over a decade.

The instructors are foremost in their field which includes artists, college professors, and high school art teachers from the region. Courses range from drawing, ceramics, painting, photography, printmaking, video media arts, portfolio development, to other areas of interest such as glassworks. Classes can range from six week courses to one day workshops and are offered weekday evenings and Saturdays.

We also offer professional development courses for artist. Artists can take courses in estate planning, marketing, portfolio development, cataloging and intellectual property and the law.

Each year through, assessment surveying, we add other courses that may be of interest to our students making our program classically designed but infused with latest trends and technology in the field of art. 

Youth Curriculum Overview

At the Buffalo Arts Studios (BAS) we believe that in order for students to create, discuss and appreciate art, they must develop strong skills in observation, analysis, and interpretation when working with art. BAS also believes students must develop an understanding of their personal and global environment so that they may utilize this knowledge when working on their art and discussing the art of others.

BAS teachers will help students dissect and understand the world around them, guide them through their thoughts and reactions to those understandings, and then assist them as they express their newly constructed ideas about the world through their artwork and critique.

BAS teachers will also stress to students the importance of artistic concepts, such as color theory, perspective, juxtaposition, identity, and composition, when creating and critiquing art. The influences that are vital to an artists’ language in contemporary art practice will also be discussed, as we value and include contextual information about the art and artists we focus on. Whether it is art history, culture, background or socio/political influences, BAS students will learn what inspires them as artists and how to express that visually.

BAS teachers will provide the framework for using basic art elements, principles of design, and the imaginative and physical processes artists use, to support student creation and development of ideas. By providing this framework, students will be able to focus on exploration and experimentation as process rather than a final product. This will help students understand the aesthetic and conceptual choices artists make. The students will learn that artists can start with ideas and move toward materials and techniques or start by playing with materials and techniques and move toward ideas. Exploration is a vital part of the artistic process—and just plain fun!

With this basic curricular foundation, each of our BAS teachers will develop a rigorous and engaging class experience that will be inspired by their individual artistic and teaching methods, as well as students’ interests and needs.

BAS art courses expand upon what students are learning in school, pushing them to new heights in their artistic development. Ultimately, a major goal of BAS is to provide each student with a strong comprehensive art portfolio that may be used in the following ways; college application portfolio submissions, New York State Summer School for the Arts application portfolio submissions, entrance interviews to the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, and potential scholarship opportunities.

We look forward to having you join us in the very near future. Please contact the BAS Education Department at 716-833-4450 with any questions you may have…we’d be more than happy to answer them!