Chronicle 17-18 Issue 10_FIXED

12 The Chronicle March 27 - April 2, 2018 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca Community
The LivingRoom:
A community
art studio for all
Cassidy McMullen
The Chronicle
Driving down Simcoe St. S., you
might have noticed two rockers
sitting outside a store called The
LivingRoom. Some might assume
it’s a furniture store, but if you
ever take the time to go in, you’ll
find something very different.
The LivingRoom is a community
art studio. People come to
make art, attend workshops, performances
and meet new people
says founder and executive director
of The LivingRoom, Mary
Kronhert.
“We’re a part of something
called the Art Hive movement,”
Krohnert says. “We believe in
creating safe places where people
can come and share art for free in
the service of community development
and personal well-being.”
The LivingRoom started as a
collage group. Krohnert ran the
group in the back of a restaurant
in 2013. After a year, she got a
grant and opened The Living-
Room as a registered non-forprofit
in Nov. of 2014.
“As an artist, I have always
used art to heal, to express myself,
to connect with other people, so
at one point of my life I thought
that meant I would become an art
therapist,” Krohnert says. That’s
what led her to go to school and
become an art therapist, but the
work environment wasn’t for her.
“I found I didn’t fit into any
traditional, clinical settings. I’ve
been an artist for so long, that it
just didn’t feel right being in an
office all day,” Kronhert says.
She also found herself questioning
why everyone didn’t know
the skills that she had learned.
She thought people should know
how to take care of themselves
and express themselves through
art, Kronhert says.
“I start looking at a way to
combine art making and community
engagement and I discovered
the Art Hive movement.”
Kronhert says.
The Art Hive movement connects
community art studios
across Canada and throughout
the world. Together they push
forward the idea everyone is an
artist, making art is human behaviour
and by providing spaces
to create art strengthens communities.
The goal of the Art Hive movement
is to ‘create multiple opportunities
for dialogue, skill sharing,
and art making between people
of differing socio-economic backgrounds,
ages, cultures and abilities’,
the Art Hive website says.
Kronhert studied at Concordia
University under the founder of
the Art Hive movement, Dr. Janis
Timm-Bottos, to learn how to
create an art hive and to how to
maintain them.
“It was like this is it,” Kronhert
says. “Something where I could
still be any artist and I could be
with people in the community.”
The impact The LivingRoom
has had on Simcoe Street so far
has been positive. It has created
an economic impact on the local
business by providing foot traffic
to the mainly store front area
bring in more customers, Kronhert
says.
“Since we’ve moved here, it’s
the first period where the stores
across the road there have been
constantly rented out,” Kronhert
says. “For a long time, apparently,
they had been closed and empty.”
The Livingroom has an Art
Shop that let’s community members
buy and sell art.
The impact isn’t just economic
either. It has an impact on community
members, according to
Kronhert. Not only do they get to
The LivingRoom, located on Simcoe St. S. by Memorial Park in Oshawa.
Mary Kronhert, the founder and executive director of the LivingRoom.
work in a studio with art supplies
at a pay-what-you-can rate, they
can also participate in workshops,
put on a workshop themselves and
branch out to meet new people in
their community.
Ceth Legere has been coming
to The LivingRoom as a regular
visitor since it first started. Legere
also volunteers at The Living-
Room occasionally to wash paint
brushes and clean up.
Thanks to the Art Shop at The
LivingRoom, Legere has been
able to sell artwork and branch
out online and attend their fundraising
events like Handmade
with Heart that the The Living-
Room puts on.
“It’s like the best place in Oshawa,”
Legere says. “It’s really safe
and understanding… we keep
this place a safe place, but we also
keep it really open and really honest
and communitive, it’s never
a judgement space, it’s always to
support the person that’s in the
community.”
Aside from that, Legere has
been given a space to be able to
feel safe and push past her social
Photograph by Cassidy McMullen
anxiety to make friends.
“It just feels like such a safe
space you can just talk to anyone
and have it be fine,” Legere says.
Liam Ward has been coming
to The LivingRoom with his
Mom since the beginning of 2017.
“It really helps me get into my
artistic side,” Ward says. “I, like,
walk back and forth and just look
at things and sometimes I figure
out stuff to put together.”
Ward uses his time at The
LivingRoom to make all sorts
of art, like plan Dungeons and
Dragons games and resurface
Nerf guns.
“You can do anything here,
even if you just wanted to sit down,
have a cup of, like, coffee and do
some school work they would be
perfectly fine with that, it’s just a
place for, like, community.”
Ward has been out of school
for the last two years because of
complications with scoliosis surgery
where hardwire was inserted
to straighten out and reinforce his
spine. He’s hoping to start going
to school again, even if it’s just one
class a week. For now, The LivingRoom
gives him a place to go
and do something.
“It’s a huge relief to come here,
I love it. It's a place where I can
relax and focus on something
other than my health issues for
once and I’ve made a lot of friends
here.” Ward says.
Ward has also started teaching
Dungeons and Dragons workshops
every last Sunday of the
month to introduce beginners to
the game and to teach them to become
dungeon masters, the person
who makes the quest and runs
the game.
“We used to come here once
a week but now we’re coming
as often as we can,” Ward says.
“I am disappointed this place is
closed two days of the week.”
Kathleen Finley has been coming
to The LivingRoom for a year
and a half now. She was living in
transitional housing nearby and
was out walking when she found
the LivingRoom.
“It’s a place of comfort,” Finley
say. “The experience is really
Photograph by Cassidy McMullen
what you wanted it to be.”
Finley took a few months to
get used to the space. She started
off by going a couple times over
a couple months, but now she’s a
volunteer.
“This place is for, you know,
to find their own inner artist but
also to connect to people and get
dialogue going and build relationships,”
Finley says. “That was
very unique and I thought, I can’t
believe a place like this exists.”
Finley says it’s helped her tap
into her creativity. “A lot of it is
play for me, in a very different
way, in a creative way, so it taught
me it was okay to do that and to
be self-nurturing,” says Finley.
Finley loves nature and working
with the earth. In the summer
time, she works in the community
garden behind The LivingRoom.
“When I first found out they
had a yard, I jumped on board,”
Finley says.
She’s also known around The
LivingRoom as the yarn bomber.
She covered the portion of sidewalk
across the street with yarn
and experiments with different
mediums.
The LivingRoom is run completely
on donations, grants and
fundraising events. Their fee is a
pay-what-you-can to use the space
and most of the art supplies. They
also offer workshops for free or at
a low cost to cover supplies.
“Every penny counts, every
dollar counts,” Kronhert says.
The LivingRoom has set up a
Patreon for online donations.
They also take donations of
art supplies and other essentials.
Some things they’re always in
need of is any type of glue, glitter,
dish soap, coffee and coffee whitener.
Fans of making art from found
things like broken chairs and
clothing, they like donations of
unusual things like fence posts or
old windows.
“What the LivingRoom really
needs, is you,” Kronhert says.
“We want to meet you. Even
if you’re nervous, you have something
to offer to your community.”