All year long Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs holds classes in all manner of the arts. The teachers are always seasoned pro’s passing on both a love for the creative process and the technical aspects of the medium, too.

Many of the classes cater to teens and adults, others, like those taught by Lani Carney (Miss Lani to all), embrace the budding imaginative power of children and give the kids the foundation for a long love-affair with art.

Or rather, in Miss Lani’s case, the kids provide the foundation for the teacher. As her name suggests, Miss Lani is eternally youthful and proves that Ponce de Leon quest was definitely down a Floridian dead end. The fountain of youth most definitely resides at the end of a paint brush wielded by a five year old.

Miss Lani’s art classes at Featherstone are just beginning this week. They include Saturday Art Adventures, Art for Kindergartners, Wet & Wild World of Color and A Taste of Modernism, to name just a few.

In the past, her modernism course has incorporated the likes of Paul Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso and Gauguin into the art curriculum for 8 to 11 years olds. This year the artist of the hour is Andre Derain.

“His work is an example of where bold contrasts of light and dark colors, yellow against violet, orange against blue... are central to improvisational thinking,” explained Miss Lani.

In other words, Miss Lani is not running a house of academia but rather a creative hothouse where past masters of the form are central to expanding the artful mind.

“We will create color chords, astonishingly rich where our young artists are glowing,” she continued. “Is this not what it is all about?”

Yes, indeed it is. And to take part, check out