Langley Arts Program Offers Low-Cost Classes, Creative Community for South Whidbey Residents

The former science lab inside the Spencer Building at the South Whidbey Community Center, once equipped with chemistry stations and Bunsen burners, now runs on a different kind of energy. The same tables now hold collage scissors, watercolor palettes, and ukuleles. A donation jar sits on the counter, and on most days, adult residents of South Whidbey fill the seats learning something new.

Create Space Langley, the volunteer-run arts program that has occupied that converted lab since 2018, asks participants to donate $5 per class hour. The typical course runs two hours a week for four weeks: $40 total. The full range, from a single drop-in to a complete multi-week course, spans $5 to $65. For those who cannot afford even that, a pay-as-you-can policy ensures cost alone stops nobody at the bright blue door.

Heidi Anton of Coupeville has worked her way through collage, weaving, serenity scrolls, jewelry making, and sewing, plus a few courses she can no longer quite name. "I love to play, and the atmosphere at Create Space is just so welcoming and restorative," Anton said. Ann Hooe, a self-described relapsed art student who hadn't used her art degree in decades, put it plainly after her third collage session: "Every class, we learn something new."

Create Space is the creation of Peggy Taylor and Jackie Amatucci, two arts advocates who had previously run programs for teenagers that nurtured creative expression without competitive pressure. Taylor, who holds a master's degree in creative arts education, remembered watching young people transform in those settings. "We saw youth who had never taken an art class, who didn't think they had an ounce of creativity, come alive," Taylor said. "Their participation in a judgment-free atmosphere with no goal of becoming a great artist, gave them confidence, expanded their curiosity and opened their minds to new people and new ideas."

In 2018, Taylor and Amatucci were walking past the newly converted South Whidbey Community Center when they noticed the science lab still unoccupied. The startup was deliberately bare-bones. "It took very little money to get started," Taylor recalled. "We bought eight sturdy second-hand folding tables and 65 chairs from a party company in Everett for $600." The early years ran as an open studio drawing three generations of neighbors on Wednesday afternoons, with a free class offered to middle schoolers.

Eight years later, the program has outgrown that original room, leasing a second classroom to accommodate a schedule that now spans drawing, painting, fiber arts, writing, ukulele, singing, jewelry making, collage, and sewing. Amatucci, a former nun and high school teacher from New Mexico, teaches the collage course "Magic of Collage: Find Your Inner Artist," which fills quickly and draws repeat students. A weekly open studio runs every Wednesday from 1 to 5 p.m., where participants can bring their own projects or start something new with supplies on hand.

Last year, Create Space joined the Whidbey Island Arts Council as a fiscally sponsored program, a move that extended nonprofit status to the all-volunteer organization and opened doors to grant funding typically available only to 501(c)(3) groups. Payments for classes are made out by check to the Whidbey Island Arts Council and deposited in a classroom jar, or submitted by credit card through the program's website.

Create Space is actively recruiting volunteers and seeking an art instructor with experience in live drawing with models. Classes are held at 723 Camano Ave. in Langley, in the Spencer Building directly behind the Island Dance School. Look for the mural of two children holding a flower on the exterior, then follow it to the blue door. To ask about classes, donate materials, or volunteer, contact Jackie Amatucci at bebear@whidbey.com or 360-969-5463.