As InGenius! Gallery & Boutique celebrates its third anniversary this summer, the Yelm business opened a new space dedicated to its arts program called InGenius! Artventures on Saturday, May 11. The slot is next to its current one on First Street South in Yelm, across from Yelm City Park.
InGenius! Artventures is geared toward classes for adolescents and aims to honor the creative process that supports the unique, innate creativity in each student. In addition to visual arts, the program will include music, movement, gardening, eco-printing, macrame and more.
The space was previously owned by Mat Magick, a massage therapist business that relocated to Lacey. Andrea Levanti, owner of InGenius!, and partner Diego Fleitas learned the space would be available early in the spring, and upon receiving the key a couple of weeks later, they went to work on brainstorming how to use the space and what it would look like compared to its next door slot.
“Our goal was to start working with kids. We could have done it next door, but it’s better to have them in a separate place,” Fleitas said. “We want to bring a healthy way to learn art without being criticized. It’s just to start teaching the right way and letting them be creative. Let them be messy if they want to be messy at the beginning, and then they can learn how to control the tools, colors and techniques.”
During its grand opening celebration, InGenius! hosted different art activities for visitors of all ages, as well as live music. Coming up, InGenius! is hosting two four-week programs, from June 24 to July 18 and from July 29 to Aug. 22. They will run from Monday to Friday and offer a variety of classes and scheduling options to fit families’ needs. Participants can choose one day of the week or multiple days, and children can attend as many classes as they want.
“We really want to find out what people want. We don’t want to assume, and we don’t want to do what everybody else does because that’s already available,” Levanti said. “Our gallery is different from other galleries. Everything should be unique.”
Fleitas added that the program will also include some classes designed to teach children skills that “have been forgotten,” such as gardening, harvesting, building bird houses, using nature for materials and more.
“Some people don’t know that you can just grab an orange and make orange juice. We want to give them hands-on materials and different media so they can find out what they like and give them the opportunity to try different things,” he said.
Levanti and Fleitas are driven to make art a prevalent part of the Yelm community and provide opportunities for artists of all ages to express themselves.
“Our vision is to find what we need here in Yelm. Working with kids is one of the things that we can see so far,” Fleitas said. “Art is being forgotten. We want to bring it back.”
For more information about the upcoming summer program, contact ingeniusgallery@gmail.com.
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