Free Columbia began in 2009 as a year long program based in experiential two dimensional art: painting and drawing. Over the years Free Columbia expanded to include puppetry, Goethean science, social change, children’s classes and much more, but the base in experience runs through all of our programs.

Now visual art at Free Columbia is taught in a variety of programs. Some years we have residential programs, some years short courses and low residency programs. We have new online classes and we teach week long and weekend workshops in many places around the country. Through all of these programs runs the investigation into the realm of quality. Example: how is red different from blue on a feeling level; what does heaviness feel like as opposed to levity?

One of our students once said, “I completed a four year BFA and they never used the word experience, you guys use it everyday”.

To enter into the realm of quality is a lesson in slowing down and listening to locate a perceptive capacity in yourself that goes beyond sympathy and antipathy. All of Free Columbia’s work in the visual arts encourages this perspective.

Colors of Spring

Online course
April 10,17,24 and May 1
10am New York time
Come join us online to experience spring through painting. 4 sessions using pencil, pen, ink, and watercolor.
Sliding scale $0-80
You will receive the first lesson before the first call.

Online Classes Form

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Drawing to Experience the Gospel of John

**How can we learn to know something on a deeper level?**
An online Webinar for 22 weeks January 3 – May 29
**Wednesdays at 1pm** New York Time
How can we experience this sacred text? There are many ways - but in this online webinar we will experience through the creative process of contemplation, drawing and painting. No experience is necessary, the exercises are simple and process oriented. Each week Laura Summer will demonstrate an exercise and answer questions and then, during the week, you can try it at home. The next week we will break into small groups and you can share you work and experience.
“Saint John relates what he experiences as an initiated seer, who could look into the Spiritual worlds…. Whoever looks upon it as a book that one should read and understand in the same way as one reads and understands any other book knows nothing of the Saint John Gospel. He alone has knowledge of it who can experience it”. Rudolf Steiner *Esoteric Christianity*
Sliding Scale $0 - $220

Sign up for Drawing to experience the gospel of saint john

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Drawing to Investigate the Apocalypse

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Cold Wax – an introduction

This course is based on a 5 day course “Colors and Gestures of the Plant World – a workshop using Cold Wax”, that I taught in June 2022. The lessons are laid out as the course was given with the 5th day being finishing up and reviewing. The course includes a monthly zoom gathering with anyone who is exploring the medium of cold wax. You can join the course at any time.
**Zoom calls are held on third Fridays of every month at 1pm NY time starting in October.**

2023-24 Class Schedule:

All course tuition is on a sliding scale, students are expected to make a monthly contribution that is significant for them. Sliding Scale explanation and suggestions are available from Laura Summer.

All times are New York time

Wednesdays:

8:30am
Color Dynamics
12 weeks- 12 zoom calls - 6 pdf lessons zoom calls every week

11:30 am or 6pm
Painting and Drawing to investigate the Apocalypse or Revelation of John

The last book of the Bible
In this class we will look at the pictures of this text by drawing and painting. As supplementary text we will use Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on the Apocalypse This class will continue in 2024

1pm
Drawing to Experience the Gospel of Saint John
An online Webinar for 22 weeks
January 3 – May 29

Fridays once a month: Cold Wax

Tuesdays once a month: working artistically with the Mantra of the School for Spiritual Science

As well as these some previously given courses are available this year without zoom calls. If you want to take one of these courses you will be sent it in pdf form, some with video demonstrations. This can also work if the times offered for zoom calls don’t work for you.
All of these courses work with the subject by drawing and painting.
Sliding scale $0-300

Rudolf Steiner’s sketches for painters ( Nature Moods)
Rudolf Steiner’s Genesis lectures
The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner
The Gospel of John
The Calendar of the Soul
Plants and Landscapes
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on Color
Image Colors

Visual Art: Exercises in Painting and Color

an Educaredo course by Laura Summer

This course is an overview of the work Laura has done with color. The student receives a lesson each month, work is done at home and Laura provides email support and mentoring. Sign up is through Educaredo.

Reflections from students in previous courses:

“This course has helped me to break out of many narrow habits. I see how my own artwork is subtly transformed. And how in looking out into the world, I see relationships of form and color that I’ve never noticed before. They show themselves to me and I can imagine them saying, “Where have you been?” I had the image around the time of our third session that I was riding on a train and that the course wasn’t putting me on a different track but that the track I was already on was climbing higher and through new territory.” Jo Valens

“If you want to know how color works, how it lives, how it walks, how it sits on a page - take this course. Color had always been a blind spot for me. I'd always been a black-white-gray, light-and-shadow artist. I hadn't learned about color theory beyond memorizing the color wheel, and the only way I knew about complimentary colors was by remembering to look across the wheel from one color to the other. Now I know how the color wheel works, why compliments exist, how they're useful, and how the individual colors themselves act. This course will require a lot of exertion at times, and will ask you to do things you've never done before, but it'll be worth it.” Andrew Madey