WHAM

WHAM Art Association is committed to support and promote art awareness and participation in the West Valley through exhibits, art walks, public art, festivals, art education and instructional art classes. Continuing our motto of being "Inclusive" not "Exclusive" bringing the ARTS to the masses. WHAM Art Association achieves its mission through intensive, year-round activities for all ages and abilities in concert with community led programming that engages local audiences in quality artistic experiences and expression.
WHAM operates in an 8,500 sq. ft facility that houses a professional gallery, 17 active artist studios, and several classrooms for teaching the arts. WHAM also has a program WHAM on WHEELS that takes a art studio trailer to the parks to teach to those who cannot come to our facility. WHAM currently has 250+ members and growing. Fully 1/3 of the members are art educators and talented in many visual arts mediums. WHAM has all the traditional art classes but focuses on several outreach programs for the under-served populations of Veterans with PTSD; people with special needs; patients with Alzheimer’s; and Teens At-Risk. Our new outreach is Street Lights USA a sex traffic shelter for girls where we will give them free art classes twice a month. WHAM has created with community participation several public art pieces throughout 8 West Valley Cities. WHAM supplements many city arts departments with our talented professional artists as instructors and leaders in their own events and art activities. WHAM has worked with many school districts to teach art in their classrooms when they don’t have the art teachers to do so. WHAM is dependent on funds from individuals, companies, and grants to continue to provide our community programming. WHAM’s tag line is “WHAT’s Happen’n Art Movement” which allows us to be fluid and reflect our community and culture of today. WHAM now has Literary Arts programs: Poetry Nights everyother month on 3rd Friday of the month, Oral History archiving videos of historical Peoria; and our own Youth Poet Laureate for Maricopa County. If it is creative and artistic WHAM will do it.