Aletheia

Artjam

Experience. Experiment. Expression.

An Artjam is a space, a canvas on the floor, live music, and however many people are willing to put their hands in it.

Nobody arrives with a plan. The musicians begin, and the painting follows wherever the sound goes. Mixed media, wet and dry, built up and scraped back over the course of a night.

What remains at the end is a single work made by everyone who was in the space. A visual record of a journey that only happened once.

A musician playing hand drums beside a window
Two players sharing a handpan
A woman on bongos and a man on handpan, playing across the space from each other

The music leads. The painting is what following it looks like.

A drummer mid-laugh, surrounded by canvases
A guitarist playing while others listen
A group bent over the canvas, hands working the surface
01

The music starts

Handpan, drums, strings, voice. Live, unrehearsed, and running for as long as the space holds.

02

Everyone paints

No experience required and no brief given. Paint, ink, hands, tools, whatever is in reach.

03

One canvas remains

Layered, argued with, half-erased. A single piece that could not have been planned.

A child painting alone on the large floor canvas
A figure drawing a squeegee across the wet surface
Close over-the-shoulder view of a squeegee pulling shapes through paint

It is not a class and it is not a performance. Nobody is taught, and nobody is watching. The work is made in the same space and at the same time as the sound that produced it.

Some people paint for six hours. Some sit and listen and put one mark down near the end. Both belong on the canvas.

Two people leaning across the canvas together
A participant standing with a brush, considering the space
Wide view of the studio, canvases stacked and paint laid out on a trestle table
The space mid-session, drums and conversation and people at rest
A participant lying back, laughing, holding a flute
Wide view of the space, the canvas spread across the floor as the night runs on

Inside the space

Hands, hours, and the canvas underneath all of it.

Four people kneeling around a canvas on the floor, working together by lamplight

What remains

Spirals, bursts, figures that nobody agreed to make. The canvas holds every pass, every correction, and every hand that was there.

The finished Artjam painting installed in a gallery, in full colour
The canvas, finished and hung

Host a jam

Private sessions, gatherings, and commissioned jams. Tell us the space and roughly how many people, and we will take it from there.

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