Student, teacher forge art partnership

Jenna Macho was a young girl attending Palm Crest Elementary School in the ‘90s the first time her eyes were opened to the beauty and power of art.

The experience of imagining worlds, of learning techniques employed by the world’s masters and then manipulating them in ways that expressed her own feelings and ideas ignited in her something she’d carry with her into adulthood.

And it all happened thanks to Lindsay Epstein, a former art consultant for La Cañada schools who took it into her head in 1987 to create “Lindsay Epstein’s Children’s Art Classes,” a private after-school program run out of her Hillard Art home studio.

“I took to it pretty quickly,” Macho said of the classes, which convened weekly during the school year and in summer sessions. “It was a thing I always loved coming to. It was kind of the thing to do.”

The young girl loved the lessons so much, she continued on with the program as a student at La Cañada High School, serving as a de facto teacher’s assistant in the afternoons.

“Jenna really had a good sense of color and design, and she just loved to paint,” Epstein recalled in a recent interview. “Taking an art class is usually the last thing on the list for kids to do. (So) we got the kids who wanted to be there in the worst way.”

The Art Room owner Jenna Macho of Burbank, shows her students how to create shadows in water colors, at her studio in La Crescenta on Wednesday, July 13, 2016.

(Raul Roa / Staff Photographer)

After Macho earned her degree from Santa Clara University in 2008, which included a minor in art, Epstein asked if she’d like to be a partner in the business. They called the new joint enterprise the Art Room.

The business eventually relocated to La Crescenta, where it still runs after-school and summer classes from an inconspicuous upper-floor suite in Foothill Boulevard office building just west of Briggs Avenue.

Today, Macho lives in Burbank and is sole owner of the Art Room (though Epstein still has a key to the building and brings her grandchildren in for lessons) and runs pre K-12 classes when she’s not teaching fifth-grade at a private school in San Marino.

While she’s created some new programs for teens and even adults, including a monthly get-together that combines yoga sessions with free-form art projects, Macho has retained the spirit of her mentor’s vision.

“It’s been the space it always has been for me, ever since it was Lindsay’s,” she said. “We want kids to learn the skill and the process of art, but also we want to make a space for them to be creative. It doesn’t have to have a special purpose or end goal — you can just come here and be.”

That’s something La Cañada mom Michelle Chandler appreciates. Her daughters, 13-year-old Cora and Willow, 10, have been taking classes at the Art Room since kindergarten and enroll in Macho’s mixed media camp every summer.

“While the girls have some art at school, they both love the creative art, the creative freedom, the nurturing environment and sense of family they feel at the Art Room,” Chandler said in an email interview. “[Jenna] knows art, she knows kids and she knows they need to play. These qualities invoke beautiful artistic expression and the kids feel happy and confident.”

In summertime, programs change weekly to offer a wide range of themes. This week’s theme is “Great Painters Camp,” where students use the techniques of Monet, Magritte and Mondrian as a springboard for their own creations.

Macho says teaching kids the essentials while encouraging them to explore concepts on their own is its own art form. Epstein agrees.

“You have to teach them a little bit, but then it blossoms in just the way they want it to,” she said.

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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine