By Teresa Fleming

flemingt17@grinnell.edu

This Friday, April 28, marks a moment of transition for the Grinnell Area Arts Council, as they look towards their new expansion into the Stew Art Studios, a section of the storefront across from the current Stewart Arts Center. The building will serve as workspaces for local artists and community makers.

To celebrate the move, the Arts Council will host an opening party for local community members. The event will focus on the kind of communal energy that inspired the new studios. “The name is a play on the art center building in the former Stewart Library,” wrote Arts Council Events Manager Eric Jarvis in an email to The S&B. “In addition to the historical reference and tie to their primary facility, the council liked the connotations of stew: communal, diverse, warming.”

In keeping with the theme of forward movement, Friday’s events will shift over the course of the evening. Festivities will begin with an opening reception at 6 p.m. for Jennifer Fisher Jones’s exhibition at the Stewart Arts Center “Variations on the Square,” a series of paintings portraying people swimming in water..

Following the reception, the Arts Center has invited local community members and students to a potluck dinner in the Arts Center yard, a gathering which aims to capture some of the community energy that is typical of Grinnell’s arts scene.

“The potlucks that Grin City collective used to host were a great way to get different kinds of people hanging out and talking,” Jarvis wrote. “We want the Stew to generate a similar kind of community.”