BY VESNA JAKSIC LOWE
@VESNAJAKSIC FEBRUARY 2018 I BOROMAG.COM
As he outlined a Sonic character on
a piece of paper, Sophocles Plokamakis
instructed children to view
its body parts in terms of different
shapes before sketching it out.
“The head is tricky, right?” Plokamakis,
a cartoonist and animator,
said during the Friday afternoon class. “But
all you’ve got to do is break it down into
shapes. This is an arm, but I see a circle and
an oval. And just think — every time you
make a mistake, you get better. The more
mistakes you make, the better you get.”
The hour-long cartooning class took place
at Playday, Long Island City’s newest art
space for children. Located on 51st Avenue,
Playday offers drop-in classes such as origami,
textile arts, sticker craze, rock ‘n’ roll posters
and finger knitting. Sessions are offered
seven days a week and include “Grown Up &
Me” options for toddlers as well as drop-off
classes for older children.
Playday was founded by Gregory Okshteyn,
a father of two who has lived in Long Island City
for 16 years. His children attend the local public
school, where he said they are thriving but
receive very little art education.
“They are teaching creativity through math
and writing, which is great, but the kids are
not working with their hands. They are not
problem-solving and socializing the way
we did when we grew up,” said Okshteyn,
a Ukraine-born architect who grew up in a
family of artists. “So that’s what Playday is
about — connecting our little ones with art.
My daughter recently hand-knitted a 3-foot
scarf in class and said, ‘This is the first thing
I made I can actually use,’ and I said, ‘Oh my
God, this is exactly what the instinct behind
this business was.’”
Okshteyn lives across the street from Playday;
he can see it from his apartment and
home office. When he saw the space empty
45