Two Burlington entrepreneur/artists will be opening a new all ages art studio, OneArts, at Camp Meade in Middlesex this Sunday afternoon.
The August 11 debut by artists Margaret Coleman and Rebecca Hale is an extension of their successful Burlington neighborhood art centers, after school learning centers and early childhood education centers.
Their Camp Meade programming will start in one of the renovated cabins on the green and end up in the cabin called the White House. This Sunday, their open house takes place from 2 to 4 p.m. and going forward, once they are fully operational, the One Arts open studio Sundays will take place from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
They will be offering all ages family programming on Sundays and during the week they will begin offering after school arts programming three days a week with parent and school bus drop off during the school year and additional programing around school closures.
The Sunday arts events will include canvasses and paints as well adult-oriented projects such as wine glasses for etching. Coleman said there will be easier projects for kids such as puppet making and a hot glue station.
“We’ll have watercolors and watercolor paper as well as paper to make greeting cards, and we have some beautiful looms that people can rent and work with a weaving instructor. This Sunday we will also be making flower sculptures out of coffee filters,” Coleman said.
Coleman and McHale are neighbors in Burlington who met 10 years ago and began collaborating on a creating a neighborhood art center in the Old North End. That became an art center with after school classes – all staffed by volunteers – and then evolved into art camps with artists coming to share their work with local kids.
“During COVID we partnered with the city of Burlington to offer care when schools were shut down and we opened our first early learning center,” Coleman explained, adding that they developed a nonprofit and now operate two early learning centers and an after school art space that serves over 100 families a week and employees 25 full-time staff members.
Coleman said that she and McHale had been in contact with Camp Meade and Russ Bennett for several years, noting that they share a commitment to the arts.
“Our mission is creating unique and significant experiences for all ages throughout Vermont and we’ve wanted to collaborate with Russ. We’re really inspired by the work he is doing at Camp Meade, creating art and community there. This summer he called to see if we were interested in coming and working in one of the cabins on the green and we said we’d love to,” she explained.
McHale is from Maryland and came to Vermont over two decades ago, while Coleman is from Wisconsin and moved here 12 years ago. They are both professional artists (and entrepreneurs!). Coleman has a PhD in arts and McHale has a BFA.
