Author: Patrick Melroy

Artist & educator who maintains a practice in Santa Barbara CA. Melroy holds an MFA from the University of California at Santa Barbara where his thesis work involved teaching people to use axes. He was raised in the woods of Washington state where his grandfather taught him to use an axe at the age of 9, luckily he still has all his original fingers. He has taught hundreds of participants his technique of restoring vintage axes and then safely using them to split wood. His workshops include sculpture, drawing, axe making, and a variety of others still in development.
Written by Patrick Melroy

Area Meeting

We are launching an exciting new program with help from the Community Arts Workshop in Santa Barbara. Area Meeting will be a monthly gathering where invited creatives share work in need of feedback. A vital step to making good art is receiving useful feedback. Area Meeting is designed to be both a space for that […]

Written by Patrick Melroy

Creativity Rehab V2 Wrapped

Once again we met to pull our creativity out of the muck of this treacherous year. We had to limit capacity in the workshop and we look forward to running the program again very soon to accommodate all those interested and interesting people we couldn’t take on. This session was particular powerful. We saw incredible […]

Written by Patrick Melroy

Creativity REHAB

https://www.sbcaw.org/classes This time of strife has confounded the creative practice of most people. This workshop will attempt to reactivate your creative gestures through a series of activities in which the participants can find their way back into their individual creative practice. Often productivity is best activated by assignments. Melroy has spent decades collecting activities that […]

Written by Patrick Melroy

The Drift thru CAW

https://www.sbcaw.org/classes “Dérive: It is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, in which participants drop their everyday relations and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there”. — Guy Debord The workshop will meet weekly and conduct a drift. A drift for our purposes will be […]

Written by Patrick Melroy

High Intensity Imagination Training (HIIT)

We believe creativity can be activated. We also believe it can function for you the same way physical exercise works. The more you practice and develop your ability to operate your creativity the healthier you become. Your imagination and the results it can produce are a tune-able attribute, you can become better at creativity and […]

Written by Patrick Melroy

Drawing Distance

A few of you expressed a desire to get a hold of my drawing assignments for the online drawing class we are teaching at CalPoly this spring. The quarter got condensed and the instruction needed to be flexible. So I generated seven assignments around the theme Where, Who, What, When, How, Why & Because. I […]

Written by Patrick Melroy

Workshops Upcoming

Figure Drawing @ CAW Community Arts Workshop 631 Garden St. Wed March 4th 6pm-9pm $20 at the door Public Art 2020 @ CAW Community Arts Workshop 631 Garden St. Fridays in March 1pm-4pm $180 for 4 sessions registration in advance email Patrick@miscworkshop.com Figure Drawing @ CAW Community Arts Workshop 631 Garden St. Wed March 11th […]

Written by Patrick Melroy

Spring Workshops at CAW

We are so very excited to bring back one familiar workshop and two new ones to the Community Art Workshop in Santa Barbara. High Intensity Imagination Training every Friday afternoon in February will be an opportunity for people to get their imaginations back into shape for the new year. Public Art 2020 is a class […]