Artist Frederika Roeder with her work Nightfog from her 2012 “Fog Series.” Photo: Chuck Spangler

What kinds of students enroll in Art Center at Night (ACN), Art Center’s continuing studies program? Everybody from recent high school graduates to mid-career professionals to more experienced individuals pursuing new creative passions.

One student who took full advantage of ACN’s opportunities is artist Frederika Roeder, a California native whose work reflects the wide vistas, horizons and expanses of the Golden State. She uses mixed media—including acrylic, gels, resin and molding paste—to explore what she calls “the shimmering luminosity of it all.”

Over the years, she has taken several courses through Art Center at Night (ACN) with instructors Mary Winterfield and the late Franklyn Liegel. “Every second in class with them was great,” she says of her ACN experience. “I looked forward to it all week long.”

Roeder says Liegel was “unbelievably open-minded” when it came to which materials his students could use in his course Collage and Assemblage. “One student came in with door frames,” she laughs, and then remembers how Liegel would ask everybody to lay out their materials in an organized fashion before starting work.

“He told us that when we left his class we’d be able to set up our own studio,” she says. “He constantly reminded us what a ‘studio practice’ really meant.”

Roeder’s Eaton Canyon (2010),  created as part of Mary Winterfield’s Color and Light in Painting course.

Roeder also cites Winterfield’s interpretations of color and light as being influential in her work. “I love color and I think you can never know enough about it,” she says, and recalls how her instructor would lecture on and demonstrate the “infinite qualities of color” in terms of tone, hue and value in her course Color and Light in Painting.

“If anybody can take color apart and talk about it in current terms, it’s Mary,” she says. “I left her classes way more informed than when I entered.”

Roeder’s work was recently included in the exhibition Ink & Clay 40 at the Kellogg Gallery at Cal Poly University, Pomona, and she has also exhibited at Shoshana Wayne Gallery at Bergamont Station in Santa Monica and at both Factory Studio and Offramp Gallery in Pasadena.

ACN offers nearly 200 innovative courses in design and the visual arts, and is designed for busy adults, with courses held during the day, in the evenings and on weekends.

New course offerings for the Spring term include DIY Like an Architect, Intro to Narrative Game Design and a Photo Field Trip series. Returning favorites include Environments for Entertainment, Meditation and the Creative Mind 2 and Valentine Card Letterpress Workshop.

Interested in experiencing ACN for yourself? Visit the program’s Fall Experience ACN, December 8–10, where you can visit select ACN courses during the last week of the current term, sit in on student presentations, ask questions and register for Spring classes.