The Selma Art Guild will sponsor a workshop to be conducted by artist John Wagnon on October 5.

The cost of the workshop will be $30 payable the day it takes place.

Wagnon, an artist from Montgomery, specializes in life drawings, which he will teach during two sessions.

The workshop is modeled after a college-style figure drawing class. There will be two sessions – one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Each session will begin with a series of warm-up drawings and then move onto lengthier drawings where a model is posing for anywhere up to 20 minutes.

Don’t worry. The model will be clothed, said Jo Ann Taylor, who is with the art guild.

In a biography provided to the art guild by Wagnon, he is a largely self-taught artist. He attended the University of Alabama back in the 1950s, where he was involved in campus publications. He became known as a satrical cartoonist who dealt with touchy issues.

He then moved to Greenwich Villiage in New York where he began experimenting with oils. The abstract expressionism of many of the works that were being painted at the time still reflects in Wagnon’s art today.

The Wagnons returned to Montgomery where he continued to paint flowers and landscapes. After a time, the works began to go on display.

Taylor said Wagnon used to be an adjunct professor at Auburn University in Montgomery.

She spoke with a mutual friend about getting him to come teach a workshop in Selma.

Wagnon’s recent paintings are currently on display at Little House Galleries in Homewood. The exhibit lasts until Oct. 5.

Wagnon has also been a longtime member of the Montgomery Art Guild and was once its president.

He served as the art guild president in the late 1960s-early 1970s.

His works recently won first prize in its category at the Montgomery Art Guild-Regions Bank Art Show.

The workshop is the first in a series of upcoming events hosted by the Selma Art Guild this fall.

Taylor and artist Robin Rogers will have a show, reception and raku firing demonstrations at the gallery in the Larry Striplin Performing Arts Center. The show is tentatively set for the first or second weekend in November.

There will also be an art show in conjunction with the Tale-Telling Festival Oct. 12-23.

And, there will be a Christmas Open House at the gallery tenatively set for the first or second Sunday in December.