ROCKLAND — Downtown Rockland has no shortage of galleries, but what about fostering more budding artists? Founded by Kathryn Matlack of Camden and Paula Apro of Rockland, two former Maine Media Workshop film students, The Art Loft aims to be a creative center amongst the creative artistic economy.

In their experience, most people never even attempt to express their creativity, either because they don’t feel like they are artists, or because the opportunity never presents itself. Matlack and Apro wanted to find a highly motivating and low-cost way of making art accessible to everyone, no matter their ability, age or income.

“We came at it from two different directions,” said Matlack. “I was volunteering with Restorative Justice and I mentored this guy who was an unbelievable artist. I couldn’t believe how good he was and in his world, art was what kept him going. So, I thought if he could be transformed with this, giving people the space for art could be useful for other groups.”

“I was coming to it from another slant,” said Apro, who also runs a digital media/photography business. “I needed a classroom to do some of my own workshops and then realized, we could use the space for not just mine, but for a whole host of other artist drop-in workshops. The more Kathryn and my visions gelled together, the more it became The Art Loft.”

The brightly lit, open 800-foot space features functional, moveable tables on casters. The legs of the tables, handcrafted by Matlack’s husband, double as storage spaces for large canvases. All around the room are shelves of art supplies for a variety of their upcoming drop-in classes and workshops such as: fiber arts, creative paper arts, photography, oil painting and kinetic sculpture. And not just limited to traditional arts, they also will offer artist business classes such as Wordpress websites and blogging for artists, and photography for business or Instagram. Their workshops are longer duration and they’ll also offer paint nights and special events. Since the versatile tables can be moved out of the way to accommodate other classes that would require more room for movement, Matlack and Apro are open to future class ideas involving physicality as well.

Essentially, they are similar to a continuing education model with their drop-in classes, but with more of a social get-together vibe.

“I love continuing ed courses,” said Apro. “I’d sign up for everything, but because I traveled a lot, I’d miss half the classes and yet, I’d already paid for the materials, so I had all of this stuff just sitting there unused.”

She wanted to remove that barrier with their model. Unlike continuing education classes, most of Art Loft’s class prices include the art materials in order to make it more affordable.

“Our whole philosophy is to take the intimidation out of art,” said Apro. “Walk in; try it and exercise your creative muscles.”

The Art Loft, situated in the back on the first floor of the Thorndike Building on Main Street, held its grand opening May 6 to kick off Rockland’s first Art Walk of the season. To learn more visit: artloftrockland.org

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com