The Art Collective Begins!

Tuesdays in the Prayer Room: 12:15 - 12:00 PM

Lauren Paden

Nov 01, 2025

The Art Collective has officially started at the Rock Hill Prayer Room.

We meet every Tuesday, 12:15 - 2:00 p.m.

Address: Rock Hill Prayer Room @ 156 Oakland Avenue, Rock Hill, SC.

Sometimes you plan and strategize until the birthing of all that you had hoped for comes forth with excellence.

And other times, with the “help” of your friends (you know who you are), you stumble into new beginnings with no plan at all.

This recent Tuesday, the Art Collective at the prayer room began. Seven people gathered around a folding table laden with jumbled art supplies. Oil pastels, paints, cups full of brushes, and boxes of markers occupied every inch between thick watercolor paper.

Six eager artists looking…well, looking to me, as I confidently declared this is “not a workshop” but simply “painting with friends.” Just minutes before I was walking out the door to meet a new friend to paint with at the prayer room, I get a text that the invite had been made public and two others were coming. Then two more let me know they were coming. And others. The painting group I had been thinking about yet never knew how to start was now starting. Ready or not here we go!

I ran around frantically gathering all the art supplies I had at hand before taking my 20-minute drive wondering, what in the world am I going to teach? Thankfully teaching wasn’t the need for this first collective of ours, just a table to be set. The prompt was simple, play with the different mediums and allow whatever feeling is bubbling up to come out in abstract art.

We painted, we shared stories, we danced, we laughed and laughed, we (or at least one of us—Lana!) fell out of a chair, which led to more laughter! When I stepped back from our first gallery wall I didn’t fail to note that these first paintings reflected just that: laughter.

I humbly could not have planned this.

The Art Collective has officially started at the Rock Hill Prayer Room.

We meet every Tuesday, 12:15 - 2:00 p.m.

Address: Rock Hill Prayer Room @ 156 Oakland Avenue, Rock Hill, SC.

The table will be set to paint and learn while we grow together as creatives. Whether you have honed your skill or are just beginning, you are welcome.

Let’s create together.