The Kent Bellows Studio and Center for Visual Arts is an art studio located off of 33rd and Leavenworth Street that features the like-named Kent Bellows program through the Joslyn Art Museum. It is named after the late Nebraskan artist Kent Bellows. The program is specialized towards the promotion and advocacy of young artists in Omaha’s art scene. It noticeably gives students a voice in the local art community.

Around 50 students from Omaha and various parts of Nebraska participate in the program, Central students included. The sub-programs students can participate in focus on ceramics, music, sculptures and woodworking, oil painting, eco arts, urban arts, fashion and a few others. Programs are continually being added onto the list in order to benefit all students’ interests.

Senior Cecily Taylor is one of the many students participating in the program at Kent Bellows. She likes to focus on illustration and ceramics, and last semester, she also worked with water colors. Taylor is grateful for the studio because it has allowed her to produce her own identity as an artist and taught her how to be an individual and has given her all of the resources she’s needed to better herself as an artist. Furthermore, she has found support at Kent Bellows and says that it is very “open form” and permits her to make her art in an individually structured environment.

Taylor adds that Kent Bellows is an open environment and “nobody discriminates against each other and nobody is mean…also [the directors] just care about everybody and they want you to do well and they support what you’re doing, which is really nice. And it’s not just art, they help you with anything that you need help with…I don’t feel like they’re my teachers or instructors, I feel like they’re my family…”

“I don’t want to not be at the studio,” Taylor says, “It’s my favorite place in Omaha, I think. It’s where I’ve been the happiest. I had friends [before Kent Bellows] but I wasn’t close to anybody and we didn’t really have the same interests, so it was kind of hard to get along with people. But now, [Kent Bellows] has made me more open to different friend groups and it made it easier to be a social person.”

One of Taylor’s friends, student Owen Zahm, senior, was recommended to the studio by a mutual friend at the beginning of his freshman year. Currently he is working on digital music projects, some individually and some that are collaborative. “Both individual and group projects have great qualities,” says Zahm. “With individual projects you get to focus on your own style but with group ones, you get to interact with other people in the studio.”

Notably, Zahm worked on a mural featuring a baseball theme for the College World Series on 17th and Cass last semester as a group project. He really enjoys working with the digital music program, abstract watercolors and woodworking.

In regards to the studio, Zahm admires “the commitment it has to the students and the commitment the students put towards it. Basically everyone there are people who are driven to better themselves art-wise or socially…you go there and [you] have a great time, but it’s also a place where people go to get their [stuff] done.”

Like many others, Zahm says that he has most definitely been changed by Kent Bellows. “When I went into it, I wasn’t that much of an artist, it was a hobby for me rather than something I saw doing for the rest of my life… it’s changed me a ton and now I’m that nerdy [kid] who just wants to sit in the art room all the time,” he says.

Teal Gardener is the Community Programs Coordinator of Kent Bellows. She works with the mentees who are technically part of the program but are unable to come to the studio because they are in an alternative high school or Boys Town. She also organizes events in the community and encourages interactions between the young artists and the public of Omaha.

Her job didn’t exist before she came so she’s been trying to grow it into “something that brings the students out into the community and also brings more influences from the outside into the studio space,” says Gardener. “Personally, I value the relationships between individuals and the community and seeing what that means through an artistic lens or even a social lens,” she says.

Studio Programs Coordinator Bridget O’Donnell believes that those participating in the program are “ambassadors for a greater creative community.” O’Donnell is an artist herself and is working on a collective show in New York City. She has been working with the Kent Bellows program since May and encourages students to “keep making.”

“As an artist, I’m always making,” she says. She also adds that Kent Bellows is a great environment for doing just that. There are no cliques and there is an abundance of openness in the space creating a healthy atmosphere.

O’Donnell repeatedly mentioned that she would have loved to have had a place like Kent Bellows to go to as a high school student. She firmly believes that every mentee can better themselves as an artist if they find their motivation.

Currently, the Kent Bellows program is collaborating with the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts on the “Urban Fruit Trails” project. The Kent Bellows students will be planting fruit trees in the metro area to correspond with the exhibit at the Bemis.

The application process isn’t too tiresome according to both O’Donnell and Gardener. Applications can be found on the Joslyn website or you can stop by the Kent Bellows studio to pick one up. Everybody gets an interview and you are required to bring a few pieces of work with you to talk about with director of the program, Westin Thompson.

“[We look for] motivation and an interest in pursuing their own questions their own curiosity their own drive to make things. My ideal student coming here is someone who is really interested in the craft of art but then also in the ideas that surround you in the world all the time and sort of feeling those out through your artwork,” explains Gardener.

Gardener adds, “Students identify their interests and get paired up with a mentor and they kind of just enter a semester’s worth of investigation and making things. It’s really self-directed and it’s really self-motivated work.”

The directors of the program emphasize that anyone can apply if they have a passion for art. Both O’Donnell and Gardener wish to diversify the program and ensure that all types of people and as many art forms as possible art being represented.

The program requires that students come into the studio at least twice a week and that they pay what they are able to. It is a non-profit organization through the Joslyn so it heavily relies on donations.

“Being able to work in a highly social environment where people are coming from a lot of different backgrounds and approaches and diversities, it’s important for people to be embracing and excited about everybody who’s here,” says Gardener. “We want a culture that celebrates everyone in the studio so those who want to meet a bunch of people who are just like them do not apply. But there’s a common thread: a desire to make and a desire to become an artist.”

The future of Kent Bellows remains in the hands of the teens of Omaha. If they choose to acknowledge this program as a pioneer of the young art community, it is sure to prosper. If they choose to suppress the artistic and social innovations of Kent Bellows’ platform, so many youth will be left without an amazing opportunity to meet incredible people with incredible stories.

The late Kent Bellows said, “I see in my mind this mysterious, ethereal museum filled with paintings I haven’t done. That’s what makes the whole trip worthwhile.” This parallels to the potential of the studio today. There is so much possibility and prospective art to be discovered through the Kent Bellows program and all throughout Omaha. Accordingly, it is up to local high school youth to embrace their artistic talent and their passion and let their voices be heard.

Kent Bellows fall semester exhibition will be held at Kent Bellows Studio and Center for Visual Arts, located at 3303 Leavenworth St.

Additionally, the fall semester fashion show will be held on December 12 at the Joslyn Art Museum.