Party Arty, Dude!

Sure it seems like a windfall, a bonus, manna from heaven, but what’s the real message being sent by these half-dozen C-notes? Well, duh—the economy sucks, the housing market’s tanked, gas is a bazillion dollars a gallon and you might just get laid...off.

So what if we told you that you could spend that stimulus check to simultaneously drown your sorrows in style, have a nosh, hang with a bunch of your friends, play with paint and develop skills that may save your hide in the scary new post-tech-bubble, post-housing-bubble, post-stock-market-bubble, post-Britney-bubble economy? You’d say we were crazy, right?

Well, we must be loonier than Low Tax Looper, because that’s exactly what we’re telling you. For just 600 relentlessly honest cherry-tree-choppers...for a mere 120 Monticello-residing slave-impregnators...for only a dozen drunken civil-war generals, you can host a combination wine-tasting/painting class for eight, led by Whitney Ferré, a woman uniquely qualified in both areas of expertise. Ever the oenophile, Whitney co-owns Rumours Wine Bar and Rumours East, and since founding the Creative Fitness Center in 1996 (it eventually morphed into The Art House, which is currently between spaces), she’s been teaching art and creativity classes to Nashvillians of all ages.

For $600, Whitney will come to your home with wines, light appetizers, paints and canvases for you and seven of your friends. The sequence of wines will coincide with the layers of the art process—i.e., you’ll start by sipping an earthy red while learning to apply the base coat, then proceed through layers of wine flavors that reflect the layers of the art process, ending with something like a fruity syrah (made from very ripe grapes) to coincide with the finishing touches on your canvas.

But Whitney’s ultimate goal goes beyond merely teaching you to paint (and plying you with booze). As her upcoming book The Artist Within: A Guide to Becoming Creatively Fit will explain in detail, learning to create art helps develop the more abstract “right brain” skills that will help you create change in your life. And in today’s business environment, the more task-oriented “left brain” jobs are being outsourced overseas (where they can do it cheaper), while skills like creativity, imagination and visualization are becoming increasingly valued in boardrooms across America.

So get creative, messy and a little buzzed with seven of your friends, and learn some marketable new career skills to boot. Now that’s what we call a stimulus package.

Email Whitney at creativelyfit@aol.com.