Aluminary Arts in Los Gatos aims to spark creativity in everyday life

Founder Lisa Tollner teaches students the techniques she learned over her long career in art

Los Gatos resident Lisa Tollner’s life was shaped by art early on. Now, she is teaching other people the techniques that she’s developed throughout her career.

Tollner opened her art studio, Aluminary Arts, in March on the corner of North Santa Cruz and Bean avenues, where she offers themed art lessons to adults and children. The idea for her business stemmed from organizing art projects with her friends during dinner parties and for her children when they were young, just like her parents did for her. Whether it was molding clay or drawing, Tollner said she and her five siblings would sit around the kitchen table to work on an art project suggested by their mother.

“It was probably her way of trying to just contain a big family and give them something to do,” Tollner said.

Those projects grew into more of a passion. When Tollner was a teenager, she asked her parents, who both made art, to teach her some of the basics and began taking oil painting classes at age 15. Tollner said her parents were supportive of her pursuing fine arts in college, but she couldn’t complete her degree and eventually dropped out of school to support herself.

“I did quite a bit of oil painting at the time, but it was inconsistent income,” Tollner said. “I’d have one or two good months followed by a couple of really dead months.”

After working some odd jobs to get by, Tollner got her first graphic design job. In the early ’80s, graphic artists still had to draw their designs by hand. With her fine art portfolio and good hand-eye coordination, Tollner was hired for a junior position in the graphics department of a high tech company.

After being “really poor for a long time,” Tollner said, she was happy to have a job and income. Her family asked if she would go back to college to finish her degree, but Tollner decided against it since she was already working in the field. At the height of her 35-year career as a graphic designer and illustrator, she opened a small advertising agency with 50 employees at its peak.

“I got my degree the old-fashioned way — by doing,” Tollner said. “I had a few lucky breaks — people who believed in me and gave me a chance — and I worked really hard.”

After retiring from the graphics business, Tollner continued to paint at home for her own pleasure, experimenting with different styles and envisioning patterns for products. However, her entrepreneurial side came out when she heard that Shirley Julian, landlord of L’Atelier Los Gatos, said she was looking for an artist to rent out studio space.

“When she said those words, I went, ‘Well, I’ve taught before,'” Tollner said. “And I thought, ‘What a fun thing for me to do at this point in my life.'”

Tollner said she tries to be a “good creative guide” during her classes, adding that she teaches her students some basic techniques and demonstrates concepts and examples to get them started. She said she encourages them to study the photos on their phones and use them as references. From there, students can make their own art as Tollner circles to provide individual help as needed. When the people she teaches are self-critical of their work, she said she encourages them to take a step back and points out the things they’ve done well.

“I think you have to go easier on yourself because sometimes a little bit of ignorance and not having a lot of technique is good,” Tollner said. “Whether it was a happy accident, whether it was a lack of technique or lack of understanding material–whatever it was, it actually broke a limitation because they weren’t so defined by tradition.”

Tollner is offering art classes for adults and children through the summer. Her spring program of adult art workshops, which runs throughout May and June, includes several classes to spark artistic interest. Some classes invite guests to drink wine and learn how to paint watercolors, make a small series of paintings or paint sea shells. Other classes are more intensive, like those for collages and acrylics.

She is hosting an eight-week summer program June 22-Aug. 13 for children ages 10-14. Each week has theme, like acrylics, watercolor, sketching or mixed media collaging. Participants can pick which weeks they’d like to attend on the LGS Recreation website based on their schedules. In the future, Tollner hopes to be able to offer beginner, intermediate and advanced classes and invite established artists to present deep dives into mediums like oil paintings, which take a long time to complete.

“Once you have the curriculum and the teaching and you have your materials organized, delivering the class is, for me, not that hard,” Tollner said. “It’s a joy and I get to teach people.”

Tollner acknowledged the impact that making art has on the brain. But she put it more simply, saying “Art is life,” and that it represents everything from early recordings of human history to Renaissance artists pursuing creativity for enjoyment, not getting rich.

“It’s an important part of everyday life,” Tollner said. “I think that there are ways that everyone can express themselves creatively, through making something with their hands, through art.”

See full article in The Mercury News here:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/05/12/aluminary-arts-in-los-gatos-aims-to-spark-creativity-in-everyday-life/