Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival

The sun rises over the Empire Polo Fields, it’s a warm spring and campers move about eager and in awed anticipation of what’s to come. They curiously explore their new temporary home away from home, making new friends and meeting hospitable neighbors along the way. During their long journey into their freshly acquired desert niche they will soon find a creative oasis of sorts, a safe haven for the artist inside every one of us. For many campers and attendants of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this will be their first year experiencing the Coachella Art Studios.
Located at the campgrounds of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the Art Studios is a festival all its own. Founded in April of 2009 by creator Sarah Scheideman, the Art Studios is an interactive art wonderland where if you can dream it, you can make it, and if you can make it, you can take it. The giant tent housing the Coachella Art Studios consists of an almost endless series of different interactive art workshops where campers wander and create works to their heart’s content; everything is free!
Upon your entrance, you are greeted by friendly artists and individuals who will encourage you to make use of the overwhelming amount of art supplies and materials. Although under one tent, each workshop is ranging in theme and completely different than the last, making a new adventure around every corner. The purpose and goal of this euphoric D.I.Y. craft culture world is to stimulate creativity, community, and camp spirit.
Some of the workshops included in the Art Studios feature instrument and jewelry making, screen printing, camp site signage and balloon decorating, clothing design and alteration, magazine publishing, postcard making and mailing, collage, and much more. No idea is too wild, even the campers are considered to be art, just ask the Makeover Mechanix, a workshop which prides itself as a transformational salon where their objective is to turn you into an intergalactic rock star, or anything else you can think of, really.
This is the fourth year for the Coachella Art Studios, and if history holds true, this year will be bigger and better than the last. The workshops are a great way to mingle and meet new people from all over the world. It gives you the opportunity to sit down to create at a table and interact with your fellow festival-goers who you wouldn’t normally get the chance to talk to.
The Coachella Art Studios are open from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. every day during the festival, and also offers late night art workshops hosted by the Midnight Crafters. These workshops are LED light and glow-in-the-dark themed and are open from 12 P.M. to 2 A.M.
If you truly want to enhance your Coachella experience, enter the mystifying world of the Coachella Art Studios, you won’t be disappointed, and you’re guaranteed to not walk away empty-handed.
For more information, please visit www.coachellaartstudios.com
Kylie Knight