From the Ground Up: A Surface Exploration Workshop with Emerging Artist Fellow Mya Seward

From the Ground Up: A Surface Exploration Workshop
with Emerging Artist Fellow Mya Seward
Date & Time: Saturday September 6, 11AM-1:30PM
FREE Community Program. Advance registration encouraged. 

Join Emerging Artist Fellow Mya Seward for a hands-on surface-making workshop that explores how texture and materials can transform your artwork. Dive into surface play with modeling paste, cardboard, and image transfers, to push your surfaces into new dimensions.  

Participants will use materials like modeling paste, cardboard, sand, and glue to build layered textures on wood panels or canvas. We’ll experiment with image transfers, distressing, and collage techniques to create unique surfaces for your artwork.  

All materials will be supplied. You are encouraged to bring your own found objects or any other project materials you’d like to add or incorporate into your work. Feel free to bring basic inkjet-printed (reversed) photos of your own images if you’d like to incorporate personal transfers. We will also have photographs and prints for you to use for acrylic image transfers. 

Whether you’re starting something new or working on a current project, this session invites you to imagine your art beyond the flat plane. Let’s experiment!  

Open to teens and up. Beginner to Expert artists welcome. 

This event is a BAC Community Program. As part of a residency at BAC, we ask each artist to build and facilitate a Community Program. Community Programs are a unique opportunity for both artists-in-residence and our local community to gather, engage, and be in conversation with one another through art. Community Programs are free engagements open to the public and/or in collaboration with a local community partner. 

About Mya Seward
My name is Mya, and I’m a visual artist whose work explores the relationship between memory, place, and personal perspective through mixed media. As a 2025 Emerging Artist Fellow at Bethany Arts Community, I’ll be spending the summer in the studio creating a new body of work that draws from objects, environments, and experiences.

Using a mix of oil paint, durable materials, collage, and photography, I build layered pieces that reflect the texture and energy of the environments I move through—especially urban and industrial spaces that often go unnoticed. I’m fascinated by the traces people leave behind: graffiti, decay, signage, and structures shaped by time. My process often begins with collecting photos, fragments, and textures, which I reconfigure into compositions that feel both chaotic and carefully composed. Through this, I aim to rediscover and redefine the world around me.

Travel is a huge source of inspiration for me. I see art as a way to document experience, to slow down and absorb details that might otherwise be missed. I love experimenting with collage and paint to reflect these discoveries, bringing together different moments and places into visual narratives. This summer, I’m excited to dive deeper into that process, to spend focused time making, exploring, and being in dialogue with other artists. The Bethany Arts Community residency is a unique opportunity to grow my practice and let new surroundings influence the direction of my work.