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Article: Art brings people together
By Clanci Cochran

CONTRA COSTA TIMES : April 9. 2006

On a recent rainy March afternoon, six women gathered in an Alameda home for an unusual party: a group art lesson.

One was the teacher's helper, another asked questions and traded tips with the instructor, and another worked diligently to make her piece perfect.

Party hostess Sherry Sherman said her 3-year-old son was "absolutely confused as to why grownups were doing art."

"He said 'grownups don't play,'" she said.

Well, Prudy Kohler thinks they should.

Kohler, 60, is the creator of Art for Lunch, a business that promotes team building in both business and personal relationships through various art-lesson exercises. For a fee, she leads groups through art projects that she says foster creativity and team building.

"It gives people a chance to get to know each other outside of a boardroom," said Kohler of San Francisco.

"It really is a good team-building activity because everybody starts at the same level. ... They're learning together."

Her hourlong sessions are offered for private parties for individuals as well as corporate events, including off-site retreats and holiday parties for organizations such as Charles Schwab and Co., Kaiser Permanente and the Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation. She offers both for-profit and nonprofit rates.

Friends Sherman, Audrey Lord-Hausman, Michelle Heaps and Jenny Shaffell often gather once a month. They tried Kohler's art lesson after Lord-Hausman participated in an Art for Lunch session at work. (She said that it was such "terrific fun" she wanted her friends to give it a try.)

Kohler got the idea while working as a grantmaker for the James Irvine Foundation in San Francisco, a philanthropic organization that offers grants to various California organizations.

Her colleagues had asked Kohler, an artist and former art teacher for 25 years, what kind of artwork she did. In the office break room, Kohler demonstrated her emulsion transfer technique "and they loved it," she said.

"The first time we did it (was) over the noon hour, so that's why I called it Art for Lunch," Kohler said. "They really liked the idea of doing something with their hands."

Kohler stepped away from her desk -- probably for good -- more than a year ago.

Finding a niche

Her new line of work is more transient: Art for Lunch serves the entire Bay Area and, despite its name, can take place during all times of day.

Last year, Kohler averaged two sessions monthly. "It's sometimes hard to convince ... corporate Bay Area that making art is a really great way of building a team," she said.

But word of mouth helps her business gain traction.

"Prudy's pretty well-known in the art community," said Patricia James, a photographer from Berkeley. Kohler conducted a session for James' birthday party in 2004.

Kohler also spreads the word through brochures, e-mails and her contacts in the nonprofit sector.

W. John "J." Mullineaux, director of development for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, said he met Kohler through her work with the Irvine foundation.

Kohler led an Art for Lunch session for Mullineaux's office holiday party last year. At the end of the night, he said, "everybody had a gift that they could give to someone during the holidays."

She led another session at the museum for a company that later became a museum sponsor, Mullineaux said.

Now, the museum opens its doors to corporate sponsors that want to work with Kohler. "It's been a nice partnership with Prudy and the corporations and the museum," Mullineaux said.

Scott Strait, chief technology officer for Charles Schwab, heard about Art for Lunch through a mutual friend. His department participated in the program in 2004 as part of an off-site planning afternoon.

"We were looking for kind of a different team-building activity" to get employees thinking about innovation, he said. "Art and creativity plays into that nicely."

Strait said the experience started off as something that could come off a Dilbert comic strip: ask employees to do something "out of the box" and "everybody gets a little uncomfortable."

In the end, he said, "it was a real success with the team."

Art for Lunch encourages creativity and is not as physically challenging as a ropes course, Strait said.

"Everybody can participate," he said. "And you have something to show for it afterward."

Art of teaching others

One of Kohler's more popular art lessons is with emulsion transfers. Starting with a Polaroid print, she puts the print into hot water, then into cold. This creates a malleable emulsion, or surface layer, with the print's image that they transfer onto a piece of paper to be manipulated "so it's more artsy and more interesting," she said.

A former art teacher and student, the techniques she demonstrates are new to almost all of her clients.

"Everybody in the group is new to it," Kohler said. "So the playing field is completely level."

At the end of a session, participants attach their works to cardboard frames.

At the Alameda get-together, partygoer Shaffell created an emulsion transfer from a 1970s picture of her and her husband of 40 years.

"I think maybe we'll use them for (anniversary) announcements," she said.

Kohler said the lasting effect of Art for Lunch is "everybody leaves with a finished piece of artwork.

"They feel good about themselves because they've made something," she said.

Reach Clanci Cochran at 925-943-8163 or ccochran@cctimes.com.

© 2006 ContraCostaTimes.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.


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