TEENSWAY

Teensway 2023 | Character Building

Teaching artist Champ Ensminger and Teensway students discover the ways that artists craft and create the characters that compel us all to keep watching, reading, playing, and listening to all of our favorite stories. Learn more.

Teensway 2022 | Art of Animation

Teaching Artist Amanda Kim will have our Teensway students make their imaginations come to life through the medium of animation. During the class, we’ll answer how some of our favorite cartoons and animations were created and try our hand at making our own animated shorts. Storytelling, creativity and art come will come together as we work on creating characters and develop the stories we’d like to tell. Amanda will share her experiences and skills with our lucky group of Teensway participants. During the class, students will get to try out skills in digital literacy, art practice, and visual communication.

Put on in partnership with the Seattle Asian American Film Festival, the youth will look forward to their animated shorts being put on the silver screen in a future SAAFF program in addition to being featured in the museum’s Frank Fujii Youth Art Gallery Space during our summer months. Participants and their family members will be invited to join the future SAAFF program featuring their work. The program will take place virtually with some select sessions that will encourage students to come visit the museum and pick up the materials for the class.

Teensway 2021 | Soft Sculptures

Teaching Artist Nina Vachayapai will share her artistic skill and reveal to us the versatility of fabric. Nina‘s work transforms cloth and fabric into beautiful room-sized installations to intimate personal collages of family memories. The sky is the limit for this medium, from traditional cultural crafts like weaving to fashion and streetwear–we’ll learn how to cut, stitch, and mix up fabric with other mediums to create unique works of art that you can hang up on your walls or even wear. During class the Teensway participants will be art and will also have opportunities to digitally explore the museum’s collections and Guilty Party exhibit.  We’ll be drawing inspiration from everything and anything, including ancient textile practices from around the world to contemporary art that pushes the boundaries of what fabric can do.

Students can expect to learn techniques in combining fabric with painting, printmaking, collaging, embroidery, sewing, and more. All of the program will take place virtually, using zoom as our meeting platform. Materials boxes will be created and sent out to homes ahead of the program to Seattle-Area residents.

Teensway 2020 | Webcomics

Whether scrolling on your phone or opening up a favorite comic’s website, webcomics take you into the lives, stories and worlds of different characters. Webcomics span many different genres and audiences from joking dinosaurs and unlikely heroes to personal histories and budding romance. What will you create? What stories will you share? During our Digital Teensway class, students answered some of these questions as they experimented and stretched their curiosity to develop their own voice and ideas for a webcomic.

Our teaching artist Jeremy Sim, a Clarion West writing teacher, writer and graphic novel author, and Ruby Wang, an artist and illustrator, shared their skills and experiences with our teens. Our Teensway participants will created characters, learn about what elements make up a compelling story, and developed the worlds that their characters enhabit. To make their webcomics come to life, students will tried their hand with different mediums; digital illustration, ink and pen, sculpture and collage. At the end of the sessions, our teens had their work published on a website. Come see their work by following this link: https://wingluke.org/teensway-comic

Teensway 2019 | Science Fiction Graphic Novels

In these fantastic science fiction realms, Teensway participants will learn how to craft and tell dynamic stories through graphic novels. Working with teaching artist Jeremy Sim and Clarion West Writers Workshop, teens will learn how to develop plots, characters, and stories of their own. Once our worlds are created, we’ll work with local illustrator, Ruby Wang, to give form to the creatures of our imaginations. Teensway participants will come away with their newly developed and illustrated graphic novel excerpts, which will be featured in the summertime exhibit showcased in the Frank Fujii Youth Space at the Wing Luke Museum.

Teensway 2018 | “Ghost-Signs”:

Bridging our Murals from the Past into the Future

The “Ghost-Signs” of our Chinatown-International District linger from decades past and serve as a reminder of Jazz-clubs, comfortable hotel rooms and businesses long closed. We’ll use these historic hand-painted signs as inspiration for our 2018 Teensway Program. Taking a closer look at the Ghost Signs and making connections to our CID neighborhood, our youth will try their hand at an old-fashioned yet still popular medium: hand painted signage.

Teensway 2017 | Second Life

The Teensway 2017 program was focused on fashion design, sustainability and recycled materials with Teaching Artist Bo Choi. Our Teensway students had deconstructed recycled clothes and through new perspectives breathed a “Second Life” into them. From “Trash”, the up-cycled clothes and other found objects were created into treasured art items. During each weekly workshop the teens learned the basics of fashion design, fiber art and textile design.

Teensway 2016 | My Impressions Are…

The Teensway 2016 program was focused on printmaking with Darius X. The students were asked to tell their own story through their lino-cut printing. Throughout the program they took field trips for inspiration; to the Mood Indigo show at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, Day Moon Press to Darius and Maura Shapely’s studio, Deng’s Art Studio in the CID to look at chops, and up to the Danny Woo Gardens to look for natural materials for collograph printing.

Teensway 2014 | flight

Working in collaboration with the Seattle Girls School and visual artist Lauren Iida, “Flight” was an exploration of paper and papercut designs, used to create a feeling of flight in each portrait.

Teensway 2013 | manifest

Working in collaboration with the Seattle Girls School and painter Mugi Takei, “Manifest” was a look at the spirit within, using paint and mix media to create an expression of the invisible.

Teensway 2011 | unexpected

Through paper, we studied ways to build a world. With stop-motion photography, we made those worlds come to life with paper animation.

Teensway 2009 | Welcome to Our World Again

Using graphic design and Three-D installation, we studied lines and grids. Teens created giant cube robots, fantastic hot air balloons, and orcas that carefully embraced the city of Seattle.

Teensway 2008 | Welcome to Our World

Through ceramics and sculpture, we studied different shapes that we found all around us. Using the shapes, the creations emerged as fortune cookies, ipods, spaghetti, and turtles that shine lights from their shells.

Teensway 2007 | We Painted From Our Hearts

We looked for different ways to tell a story. Using bold colors, we painted calming beaches, colorful fruit, and trees that gently swayed in the distance.