Get in Touch With Your Inner Child at Lantern Hall’s Weekly Sculpting Classes

For anyone looking for a fun, carefree, and creative outlet on a Wednesday evening, look no further than Sip ‘N Sculpt, a weekly event hosted by Lantern Hall and local artist Jennifer Barrett.

Guests can enjoy the bar’s wide selection of craft beers while exercising their creative capacities in an open-ended, youthfully innocent environment, working with colorful, tactile sculpting clay and morphing it into whimsical shapes of their beer-fueled choosing.

Barrett launched Sip ‘N Sculpt a little over four months over at Berg’n in Prospect Heights. She has been doing it weekly on Wednesday nights at Lantern Hall since the beginning of this summer. Her approach to the course material is casual and she’s very approachable, but she’s well-credentialed: She received a BFA in drawing at the University of Cincinnati and is currently an art teacher at a public school in East New York.

Barret had several sources of inspiration for this adult art class, but her main motivator was the desire to “provide a fun, accessible, creative outlet in a social setting.”

She eventually decided on sculpting with polymer clays “due to the versatility of the material and low mess factor” and focused on hosting in beer halls due to their size and long tables.

Each week, Barrett’s class is visited by a different professional guest sculptor at her right hand who provides tips, insight, and guidance to the students. Earlier this week, Bushwick Daily sat in on a class to see what it was all about.

The class is not strictly a lesson: participants are encouraged to play with the materials as they are inspired. On the night we visited, students who don’t have a routine creative practice found the prompt challenging at first, but after everyone got used to the clay and the surroundings (and many imbibed a beer or two), a change overtook the room. Among many of the participants, a childlike enthusiasm was untapped, and suddenly it seemed like their creativity knew no bounds.

Not far into the class, participants were excitedly making all sorts of goofy creations and reminiscing on their own childhood experiences of art classes and sculpting.

One participant who had come from Williamsburg was drawn to the class because of its casual nature. “I was looking for an affordable sculpting class and everything else I found was too expensive or time consuming,” she explains (Sip ‘N Sculpt can be a one-time experience or a recurring class to hone your skills).

Sip ‘N Scuplt takes place at Lantern Hall every Wednesday night from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. Standard tickets are $30 and include all clay materials. VIP tickets are $48 and include materials and two complimentary drinks. Participants can sign up individually or as private parties at special request.

All photos by Kevin Hoopes for Bushwick Daily.