If there’s one thing art school taught me, it’s how to appreciate a well-crafted beer. Back in the day, when I was on a student-artist budget, beer money came mostly from selling used CDs. The random 40-ounce swill we would drink on sale would always finish with a Jackson Pollock shudder.
These days, beer and art collide at local breweries on a regular basis. The entry fee to a Craft and Arts event includes a beer of your choice, and there are enough art materials to portray Bob Ross’ Afro as though it were Godzilla. Seriously, someone should paint that.
Craft and Arts is perfect for a date night or just a chill hang with friends. “People tend to get inspiration by talking to people and looking at shit,” notes founder Chris Kent as he guides us through a session. Surprisingly, his spiel about describing the beer you order and tying that to describing a piece of art you might like is something I hadn’t thought of, but it works perfectly.
As it turns out, art and beer are super-subjective. The beauty of this realization is it can help kick-start the creative process, which happens quickly at our event. Some go straight for mixed-media paint complementing magazine cut-outs. Others go for bold statements with words. I stuck to my beer description, which happened to be an Asylum Pale Ale, that went down this weird pine-and-citrus-inspired path. What came out in the end was a statement on Donald Trump’s environmental policy.
It’s not what was planned, but that’s where the process took me.
For more information on Craft and Arts, visit www.facebook.com/CRAFTbeer.ARTSncrafts.
Greg Nagel has been writing about beer since 2011, is an avid homebrewer of wine, cider, and beer, is a certified Cicerone Beer Server, level 1 WSET in Wine, a podcaster with the Four Brewers Show, and runs a yearly beer festival called Firkfest happening on June 29th in Anaheim!