Wine and Canvas helps residents paint, relax

The painters dipped their brushes in acrylic paint.

At 7 p.m., they stared at blank canvases with wide eyes. Then instructor and IU graduate Abbi Cord began covering her canvas with colors of red, blue, green, purple, and the tension dissipated.

And the painters began to drink wine.

At Wine and Canvas, a painting studio and franchise in Bloomington’s west side, the idea is to allow both former and inexperienced painters to go home with a work of art they can call their own.

Sometimes, that work of art will look like Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Starry Night” or a rendering of the Sample Gates.

Although the painters create the same picture, each painter’s work is different.

“Everybody has their own little twist on it, so it’s just neat to see the end result, especially with other people who are really scared at first and don’t think they could do it,” said Joshua Wathen, one of the owners of the Wine and Canvas studio.

In May 2011, Joshua and Sarah Wathen bought Wine and Canvas after Sarah began attending classes at the Indianapolis studio while her husband Joshua was deployed overseas with the United States military.

The studio started as a mobile business, traveling to restaurants and bars throughout Bloomington, where a professional instructor taught classes.

But as the business gained exposure, the Wathens decided to open a studio in January this year.

“It may not be what we’re looking for as far as pedestrian traffic or vehicle traffic, but it is right next to David’s Bridal,” Joshua said.  

“So there are a lot of females who go in daily, and then they wander over here and check it out.”

The studio regularly travels to four Bloomington venues: T.G.I. Friday’s, Serendipity, Crazy Horse Food and Drink Emporium and Eagle Point Golf Resort.

Classes, which typically last for two and a half to three hours, involve an instructor first revealing the painting that the participants will have replicated by the end of the night.
Then, step by step, the teacher will begin painting and advising the class until the piece is complete.

Paintbrushes, all the necessary paint colors, long black aprons and easels with 16-by-20-inch canvases are provided with each class.

The studio also offers Cookies and Canvas — two-hour, kid-friendly events where cookies are served instead of wine and 11-by-14-inch canvases are offered for $20.

“For a lot of people who come, they start off frustrated but they end up happy and calm,” said Greg Potter, a Mooresville, Ind., resident who teaches classes four to seven times a month in Bloomington and teaches at Wine and Canvas in Indianapolis 11 to 15 times a month.

Potter is one of five instructors who teach regularly at the Bloomington studio.

Joshua said most of the painters who take the classes, which cost about $35 and are offered every Friday and Saturday and sometimes Thursdays, have not touched a paint brush since they were in elementary school.

“Occasionally, we’ll get people who used to be artists, but they’ve gotten so caught up in life and stuff that they’ve lost touch and then come back and remember how fun it was,” he said.

Erika Katterjohn, a recent IU graduate who studied apparel merchandising, attended a class Saturday night with her mother, Sharon Katterjohn, who used to paint regularly.

“I was fine whenever we were doing the reds and the yellows, and then the green colors and suddenly it would all seem very permanent,” Katterjohn said. “You can’t fix it (the painting) very much from here. But my mom said you don’t have a good or bad painting. She said there are just ones you like more than others.”

Potter said his favorite part of teaching classes is helping people with certain
techniques.

“When they raise their hand for help and you go over there and help them out, you fix their painting, and they’re just ecstatic that you’ve done something for them and you show them and explain it in the process,” he said.

“And they’re all just people right off the street. They just work nine to five and they find out about it, they come here and they leave just loving every minute of it. They just leave happy.”