Sunday Model Sessions have officially returned to Long Beach State for the first time since the pandemic started, now occurring every Sunday from 4-7 p.m. in room FA4-113.
Available for CSULB students, alumni and any locals who wish to participate. Everyone is welcome to put their passion for art to work while focusing on the beauty and anatomy of the human body.
They are student-run and a nonprofit. To join a session, it is $5 for CSULB students and $10 for alumni and visitors. These funds go directly towards paying the model for each session.
According to treasurer of the club, Josie Deshler, there are current regulations from the school that prevent staff members from taking money from students and paying for models, “Without a lot of paperwork and tax stuff, so as long as it runs within the club I am able to collect funds from the students to pay for our models,” said Deshler, who also runs the Sunday sessions and currently attends CSULB as a fourth-year student in the drawing and painting BFA program.
“We are trying to get funding from the school, which we haven’t gotten yet. We want to make the sessions free once we have the funding to do so,” said Deshler.
Artistic souls from all walks of life came to the most recent model session held on Oct. 2 to put their skills to the test in a creative workspace.
Zackery Adame, a CSULB alumni with a BFA in illustration, attends these model sessions because “It’s a great way to get practice. It’s not very often you get events like this happening around, especially on campus.”
Having graduated in Spring 2021, Adame is one of many who appreciates the return of Sunday model sessions since it serves as a creative outlet for him to practice the artistic skills he previously learned at CSULB.
“It’s nice to be able to apply those skills that you learned in a controlled space like this. I’ve always loved representing the things I see in real life and translating that into my own interpretation and that’s a perfect use in the model studio here,” said Adame. “As an alumni, I come for my own enjoyment and practice but I would really recommend other art students get into doing this regularly. It’s a great way to practice having to understand form and anatomy as an artist.”
Prior to the pandemic, these sessions were held in FA4-204 but according to Deshler, it is one of the many rooms on campus with no windows and gets unbearably hot. “I had it moved downstairs to be more accessible,” said Deshler.
Along with the meetings being inactive due to the pandemic, Deshler says the BFA club was also inactive.
“Previously they were not affiliated with each other and the Sunday sessions were run by staff members, with the founding member being Yu Ji about twenty years ago,” said Deshler.
Before the baton of running the club was passed down to Deshler, Yu Ji, a CSULB professor and Program Head of Drawing and Painting, founded and oversaw the sessions for two decades.
Sunday model sessions have served as a creative outlet and personal practice for many students and local artists for over twenty years, and will continue to do so as society slowly reverts back to normalcy.