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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!