Seniors express creative side with art classes

Polly Kelly always has a project. Whether it’s knitting or crocheting, cross stitch or stained glass, the 59-year Homewood resident loves learning new crafting skills.

“A lady asked me the other day, ‘Do you always have something in your hands?’ And the answer is yes,” Kelly said. “I want to be able to do everything.”

Kelly shares her love of knitting and crocheting in particular by teaching a weekly class at the Homewood Senior Center. Of all her hobbies — which also include cooking, gardening and yoga and tai chi classes — Kelly said teaching the seniors who come to her class is “my favorite thing to do.”

She resumed teaching the classes this spring, after taking a break for a surgery. Kelly’s class is one of several artistic outlets offered at the senior center, including pottery, mixed media art and chorus, taught by Homewood residents.

Johnie and Melvine Sentell have lived in Homewood about 40 years and are lifelong artists, though Johnie prefers oil paints and Melvine prefers watercolor. Melvine Sentell is a former high school art teacher, and the couple have taught classes at church and at the library.

They started teaching at the senior center about three years ago, and Johnie Sentell said the classes are similar to his wife’s high school students except “she can’t send them to the principal.”

The Sentells work with six to eight seniors each week, with projects ranging from drawing and watercolor paints to adult coloring books. Their students come with different skill levels, but they’re there to enjoy art and each other.

“While they’re there working on things, they often get a chance to share what’s going on in their life,” Melvine Sentell said.

“They like to sit down and relax. It is very relaxing for them,” Johnie Sentell agreed.

In Kelly’s knitting and crocheting class, students frequently share yarn, project ideas and clipped coupons or articles from newspapers with each other. There are typically four to five people in her class, Kelly said, and their projects range from basic scarves and baby hats to stuffed animals and dish scrubbers.

“I like it like that because then they’re happy,” she said, adding that the variety of projects “keeps it interesting.”

Kelly learned to knit from her sister as a teenager, but she said she can’t teach her grandkids because they live out of state. Instead, she shared that knowledge with other Homewood seniors, many of whom have never held needles before.

She gets them started and coaches them through their first project, as well as giving advice as their skills grow and they bring in more complicated patterns. Kelly said she has also had to buy a book about left-handed knitting to teach one student and helped another work around her arthritis to keep creating.

Learning to knit or crochet in Kelly’s class is about enjoying time with the other students, not just stitches.

“I really enjoy the different personalities,” Kelly said.

West Homewood resident Joann Brown helped create the clay pottery program at Edgewood while she was art teacher there, and now she brings her skills to the senior center.

“I like the durability of it,” Brown said of clay, adding that the students in her class can make mementos for themselves, family or friends that will last a long time.

Brown has taught at the Senior Center for a couple years, though she had to take a break when the kiln broke. Classes just resumed in early 2018 and Brown said she wants to grow the class’s regular attendees.

Like Kelly, Brown said many of her students come in with little to no experience working with clay. That’s no problem — clay is “very forgiving,” Brown said, and any mistake can be smoothed, reshaped or even smashed into a ball of clay to start over again.

Brown’s students typically pick their own projects, with Brown offering ideas and suggestions to help them create the project they envision. Common clay creations in her class include bowls or other dishes and small sculptures. Brown said working with clay has given her an eye for textures, and she’ll spot everything from place mats and doilies to large leaves that can be brought back to class to use as a design.

She has even used a cheese grater to make a woolly sheep sculpture.

“We kind of bounce off each other,” Brown said. “There’s so many different ways to do clay.”

While she occasionally uses former elementary school projects as ideas for her senior students, Brown said she, like Sentell, had to adjust to the difference of teaching adults.

“It was quiet and no one was throwing tools at each other and no one was running around,” Brown said.

Her favorite part, however, is pulling a finished piece out of the kiln and seeing her students’ pride and satisfaction in how it turned out.

“I’m really happy to share something I really love,” Brown said.

Senior Center Art Classes

Mondays: 

► Senior chorus, 1 p.m.

► Clay, 2:15 p.m.

Tuesdays: 

► Mixed media arts, 1 p.m.

► Knit and crochet, 1:30 p.m.

The Senior Center is located at 816 Oak Grove Road. Call 332-6500 or visit homewoodparks.com/facilities/community-centers/homewood-senior-center for a full listing of Senior Center programs.