Marvegos Fine Art School

Both my 5 and 7 year old love going to Marvegos. They love the freedom the classes provide them and they come away very happy and excited every time. All the teachers are great with kids, in addition to being trained artists. The class sizes are small and each kid gets individual attention and instruction in the fundamentals of art. It is a great program for those who are artistically inclined and those that are not. Just a wonderful experience all around!

My 6-​year-​old has an affinity for drawing and painting and I wanted to support and grow that interest. Came here for a free intro class, and I really liked how the teacher (Tess) interacted with the kids, and wasn’t surprised that he wanted to sign up. He’s attended the «Art Exploration» class with teacher Tess for 2 sessions (about 9 weeks each) so far.
Class starts promptly a minute or two after the scheduled time. The teacher spends the first 5 minutes or so introducing new techniques and materials. The table and seating for the little kids’ class is just the right size. The kids do their own work, while getting a lot of positive encouragement from Tess. And the end product looks very much like «art», usually representational but sometimes abstract. (In fact, we just framed a collage-​painting he made.) It’s always a very creative experience for him (unlike other art classes I’ve tried where the kids copy an existing painting and the teacher discreetly touches up their paintings after class).
I docked one star because of this: The Art Exploration class is for ages 4 – 6, but occasionally an older child (who I assume was in the Fine Arts Fundamentals for ages 7 – 11) would join the class (to avoid having to set up a separate set of the same materials for him), and he would be very disruptive during the introduction/​explanation (e.g., interrupting Tess, answering questions she pointedly directed to one of the other kids, etc.). Tess didn’t seem to be trying to control him (perhaps she already knew it wouldn’t be useful to try), and the next time he joined the manager of the studio happened to be there so I complained. She pulled him aside and spoke to him, to limited effect. I was just about ready to speak directly to him myself (even though there’s probably an unwritten rule against reprimanding other people’s spawn), but the next session started and they stopped having him join the younger kids. So my suggestion is to stick around for a few minutes for at least the first couple of sessions (even though the studio seems designed to discourage parents from hanging around (there’s nowhere to sit and hardly anywhere to stand) to make sure that your child doesn’t need you to speak up for them.