Popular Guilford Art Center instructor CHRIS UMINGA is teaching four new courses this Fall: Skate Decks, a Sticker Workshop, Urban Alphabets and "Splatter Like Jackson Pollack." Chris's classes are designed to get kids to combine their creativity with all the art techniques they've learned along the way to create art in some unusual forms including skateboard decks.

"These classes are going to be something new for Guilford," Chris says. "Usually you'd have to go into New Haven to take classes like these. They're a bit edgy, more experimental."

Working with Chris, students will be painting their own skateboard decks with artwork of their own design. "I've been painting my own decks since I was 13," says Uminga. "It's a great way to put your own personality on your board, and to make fine art that is also functional." Along the same lines, sticker art gives students a great way to express themselves on a "mini canvas," hand drawing and/or photocopying designs on a sticker template.

The "Splatter" workshop is going to be a big event, as much an art happening as a class. Participants will emulate Jackson Pollack, yes, but their splatters will be flying off the wheels of their skateboards, which will be rolled in paint, then jumped and landed on canvas adhered to the parking lot. They'll end up creating portable paintings with random, abstract designs.

Urban Alphabets explores the art form of Graffiti. "People have quite a few ideas about graffiti," Chris says, "But the first step in understanding it as an art form is to develop a personalized alphabet. Artists have been developing alphabets for centuries and a graffiti alphabet is a very hip and cool one."

An illustrator and painter who lives in New Haven, Chris has made a specialty of giving form to the elaborate creatures of his imagination. ("I see monsters in my head, and I put them on canvas and paper and let them play," the artist says.). He is also a busy and sought-after instructor, with a full roster of classes at the Guilford Art Center, where he teaches painting, drawing, illustration, cartooning, and more. Uminga enjoys and is adept at teaching students of all ages. "I learn from each group," he says. "They all help me be a better teacher and a better artist. There's something great about teaching a small child to draw for the first time, but its great to teach a senior citizen to draw for the first time, too."

He hopes the classes will fill up with enthusiastic kids. "These are popular topics in the culture. I would bet kids are starving for this sort of thing."