Tags archives: visual arts

  • Art for Progress is pleased to announce a summer music & arts program for NYC high school students. The program is designed for students who are interested in a career in the arts and music. Workshops in music and visual arts will be offered over four dates between mid-July and mid-August. These 4 hour workshops will include guest speakers, professionals in both the visual arts and music. The guest speakers will share their knowledge, guidance and experience as professionals in the art world. The main objective of the program is to provide continued instruction over the summer months for students who are considering a future career in the arts.  Students can also be graduates who are looking for additional instruction before heading off to college or art school. The planned student to teacher ratio will be 10-15 students with a total of 40-50 students for each date. Space will be limited, and will be on a first come first serve basis.  Students can choose to attend one or more workshops, but we suggest you attend all four. Please sign up as soon as possible to secure your place.  The specific dates, location (Manhattan) and times will be available soon. These are the dates for the workshops: Workshop 1- Sunday, July 22nd- 10:30am - 2:30pm (lunch provided) Workshop 2- Sunday, July 29th- 10:30am - 2:30pm (lunch provided) Workshop 3- Sunday, August 5th- 10:30am - 2:30pm (lunch provided) Workshop 4- Sunday, August 12th- 10:30am - 2:30pm (lunch provided) [...]
  • It was the industrial revolution that first attempted to record sound “as a medium for preservation," activating the phenomena of noise as an integral source when documenting history. Thomas Edison received notoriety for the phonograph in 1877, but it was really Edouard-Lèon Scott de Martinsville who invented the phonautograph in 1857, the first recording device. The device was specifically created to study frequency found in sounds, an intention much different from the phonograph invented by Edison which was to play and “reproduce the recorded sound… originally recorded onto a tinfoil”.  As per historical reference ( author unknown ), “The phonograph revolutionized the art of music. Performances were recorded and people could listen to them at their leisure.  It also made music and communication more public. The invention signaled the birth of a new form of entertainment and an entirely new field of business that fed the demand for the new invention, the music industry”- hence both inventions put an end to the masses' naiveté to the sense of hearing, and introduced the start of audio’s sensational future possibilities. When we fast forward through the history of music and sound, we could say that the underground rave music scene (which famously erupted somewhere in between Chicago and the UK during the late 80’s), had a lot of thanking to give the founding fathers of sound, more so Edison’s phonograph. It was the phonograph that gathered groups of people before a speake[...]
  • There was once a professor who consistently lamented people not spending time with a work of art. She felt that consuming art became speedy, mediums were not fully appreciated in their details, and therefore a lot of great artwork may never get proper recognition. It's safe to say this is true for many people, and even those like myself who studied art have definitely overlooked pieces due to the extreme saturation of available art to see, especially in a metropolis like New York City (though it is something I greatly try to avoid while in a space.) I was stuck in front of Scott Williams' painting 50th Street Maspeth this past weekend, due to the intimate space at Art101 being packed with people, but I'm glad I was. His work first appears like an impressionistic modern landscape - a view of the street, cars parked, sunny day, fence to the side - but the more I stared at it the more odd I found it. I noticed his use of perspective is based on traditional one-point perspective yet it is shifted off to the side thereby disrupting the everyday banality of this type of setting. Furthermore, his use of oil paint appears both deliberate, in regards to shadowing and color, and accidental in regards to the application of paint itself. This imbues the scene with a sense of randomness and further complicates it. He writes of his "chance" paintings - "For on site, 'plein air painting', a map of Queens and Brooklyn was marked with gridded coordinates. Throwing numbered and lettered coi[...]
  • Bushwick Open Studios wrapped up a while back and this year featured a lot of wild installations, fantastical sculptures, and a return to painting. While I was there, I stopped in Pablo Garcia Lopez's studio where I saw his work that mixed all of the three. A couple of weeks later, I went back to sit down with him and talk about his practice and transformation into an artist. Garcia Lopez did not begin working professionally as an artist until recently - his background is actually in neuroscience. He holds a PhD and still teaches classes. One of his published papers on Santiago Ramon y Cajal, known to many in the field as the father of modern neuroscience, plays heavily into his artistic practice. Cajal moved away from the accepted comparison of the mind to machines, and rather pursued the idea of comparing the mind to nature, specifically plants. Cajal said, "The cerebral cortex is similar to a garden filled with innumerable trees, the pyramidal cells, that can multiply their branches thanks to an intelligent cultivation, sending their roots deeper and producing more exquisite flowers and fruits every day." Writing in the 19th century, his words come into play much later in the silk sculptural installations by Garcia Lopez. After learning of his background and interest in this matter, I was immensely curious as to how exactly it manifests in the artist's religiously charged works. He explained that his use of silk relates to the individual fibers of the brain, and [...]
  • The Soho Grand Hotel was the place to be for art enthusiasts on Wednesday September 10th as New York's fashion week kicked off. Known as a feminist artist and yarn bomber, Olek's latest show, "Reality What a Concept" opened to rave reviews. The show, curated by the uncompromising Natalie Kates, included performance pieces in addition to the crocheted playground created by Olek. Olek's work will be featured at the hotel through the end of the year. The show is part of a year long curatorial series by Natalie Kates which includes an upcoming exhibition by artist Ron English. - Frank Jackson
  • As we gear up for another school year, we've been hard at work applying for two new grants (Lily Auchincloss, Investors Bank Foundation), developing our new artist blog site, and planning events for the fall. In June, the Sansom Foundation awarded AFP another generous grant for the fourth consecutive year. The funds will help support an expanded effort to market AFP's Arts Education Programs to new schools and partner organizations. We developed a great new brochure and we have been reaching out to many new schools across NYC over the summer. If you're a teacher or school looking for dynamic artistic programming, let us know! We're equally excited about our new artist blog site which was launched in June. We have several great bloggers writing across various art genres. Hooking us up with fresh news, interviews and reviews in visual art, performance and such is Anni Irish. Anni's a Brooklyn based writer & editor and a graduate of NYU. You can check out her new posts in the middle of the month and the end of the month. Heading up our nightlife, parties, clubs blog is none other than former TONY's nightlife editor and all around great guy, Bruce Tantum. Bruce has DJ'ed at many AFP events through the years and when this opportunity came up I couldn't think of someone we would rather have on board. Bruce's blog titled, "We Learn Dances" posts on the first of each month. AFP's super duper, all around volunteer and fashion guru Allyson Jacobs heads up the fashion blog. A[...]
  • On August 4th people in Times Square were exposed to a unique art experience--digital billboards were changed from their usual advertisements to iconic American art pieces. This art intervention in a public space won't stop there and will also include a print campaign that will be seen on public transportation and throughout the city and in other locations. This is being done through the efforts of Art Everywhere US a collaboration between five major art museums and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. According to an article in the LA Times, the campaign will run from August 4-31 and will feature fifty eight images which will be displayed in close to 50,000 commercial locations in all fifty states. All the images were voted on by the public and the museums involved include The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Dallas Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The event was first conceived of by Richard Reed who produced a similar campaign in the United Kingdom in 2013. This included a similar collaboration between the Tate Modern, Art Fund and the UK out of Ihome advertising industry. Artists in the US nation wide campaign include: Andy Warhol, Winslow Homer, Cindy Sherman and John Singer Sargent among others. Art Everywhere U.S. Times Square installation, featuring Winslow Homer’s “The Water Fan” (1898-99, The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Dorothy A., John A. Jr.[...]
  • This spring AFP Arts Education Programs are celebrating the completion of our eighth school year serving NYC Public Schools with exciting, confidence building visual art and music classes and after school programs. AFP Arts Education Programs at the James Baldwin School, Humanities Preparatory Academy, and Hudson High School all expanded this year, and we continue to provide after school music programs at Quest 2 Learn, and at Hudson High School for Learning Technologies. Students at the James Baldwin School asked for an after school program where they could learn music production and beat-making, so AFP implemented a program that brings aspiring producers, rappers and singers together to learn the skills necessary to create professional quality recordings. Humanities Prep's Music Program had unprecedented success this year, introducing a number of talented students to their first instruments, and fostering the continued development of returning students through after school opportunities. In general, AFP has helped to cultivate the creative culture that is now a primary component of the school. Many students and faculty performed in a talent showcase to end the school year on June 6th. Sophomore Abril Tiburcio brought the house down with her interpretation of Lana Del Rey's "Ride", while 2014 valedictorian and class president Michelle Bello sang The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army." They were backed by Tiana Bush on bass, and Genesis Castillo pounding out the infect[...]
  • I intent to leave my cotton – peal off my masks, as skin after an accident of fire; a flower around fall. I call for honesty among grey-scales and appreciation of the silence that separates one thought from another. I long for an erase of classifications – an embrace of the unspoken. I wish for the calm of transparency, to observe what has already been forgotten when i will reach my point.