Art 21 "Compassion" airs tonight on PBS. "Fantasy" preview screening @ BCC on Oct 10 4pm

If you weren't able to make it to the Art21 Sneak Preview Screenings of Art 21 Episode 1 at the Beacon Community Center last Saturday or at the Beahive last night, the episode will be airing tonight at 10pm on WNET 13.

A preview screening of Episode 2 "Fantasy" will be held at the Beacon Community Center on Saturday, Oct 10 at 4pm.

Fantasy features the work of  Jeff Koons, Mary Heilmann, Cao Fei and Florian Maier-Aichen.

I've mentioned some of the various attributes to the Art21 world and the accompanying educational programs.  Stacey Ward Kelley and Jennie Duke, both teachers in Beacon Public School  are two of 15 chosen nationwide to participate in the Art21 Educator's program.

Stacey and Jennie will be presenting a development workshop for visual art teachers in the Beacon and Newburgh City School District's on Nov. 3.  Via Beacon Citizen Network .

Update:  "Compassion" will be viewable on the PBS Video Portal until Nov 13, 2009

CCS Bard with Art 21 presents Teaching and Learning with Contemporary Art Professional Development Workshop Series.

CCS Bard is teaming up with Art21 to offer a professional development program workshop for educators to "incorporate contemporary art into other areas of academic study." This series has 3 parts, and the fee is $120, the first part is scheduled to happen on March 25, so if you're interested, you'll have to move quickly. Call 845.758.7874 for more info. More details can be found in the press release.

The first program in the series, “Workshop 1: Learning about Contemporary Art (Object and Media-Based learning),” will be presented on Wednesday, March 25, 4–7 p.m., in conjunction with In a Room Anything Can Happen, an exhibition of the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Starting with an introduction to the materials, methods, and sites where contemporary artists are working today, this workshop will focus on ways to explore contemporary art in a museum or gallery context, as well as strategies for bringing web and video resources into the classroom and methods for actively engaging students in video and online resources for research.

The second workshop in the series, “Workshop 2: Media-based Workshop,” will be presented in the CCS Bard Library and Archives on Friday, April 24, 5–8 p.m. This workshop introduces a media-based approach to teaching and learning about contemporary art using Art21 video and web resources in the classroom. Participants will explore some of the ways theses messages are created and the different roles that producers and audiences play in interpreting media and visual art.

“Workshop 3: Merging Form and Content” will explore how artists utilize particular materials, technical skills, and working processes to convey big ideas. The program takes place on Sunday, May 17, from 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. Using the Art21 series as a starting point, the program will explore the work of a number of different artists as well as examine specific works of art and online resources to inspire curricular ideas for teaching. Participants will explore how to create content-driven curricula that addresses big ideas and meaningful themes, as well as ways of teaching technical skills, choosing materials, and utilizing formal art vocabulary with students. Renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will be at CCS Bard for this workshop to discuss the inauguration his new work, the parliament of reality, a new, permanent, outdoor installation created specifically for the Bard College campus.

Doin' it for the kids

I got home after work on Friday, and caught a bit of a broadcast on ch. 22 of the presentation Palani Mohan gave to students at Beacon High School. I caught just the last several minutes of the talk, in which he fielded questions from the students and adults in the audience. Questions to Mohan moved from his photography and the process of publishing his book to his experience of living in Asia, and how much it costs to fly there. Kudos to the Beacon City School District and Fovea Exhibitons Gallery for developing this educational outreach program. For students to be exposed to critical current events from around the world through the first hand words and images of the photographers who have been there is a rare experience that one would expect would be restricted to schools in very large cultural centers of the country. The fact that this program is available to the students of Beacon, and in the frequency in which these talks occur, is a distinction in which the community can take pride.

This item in the Poughkeepsie Journal on March 12 is very cool. I think one of the generally unheralded benefits the city receives from Dia:Beacon is the extensive education program developed by the museum with the Beacon School District for the students of Beacon. A long standing component of the program entails yearly projects where visiting artists work with teachers and students in the various grade levels to create broad installations inspired by trips to the museum for display in and around Beacon

The POJO article by Michael Woyton highlights a current project by seventh graders at Rombout Middle School. The students worked with visiting artist Kirsten Mosher and their art teacher Edmund Trad to develop a piece after looking at the work of Sol LeWitt at Dia. The photo accompanying the article shows about 15 students standing shoulder to shoulder along three walls of a corridor wearing white t-shirts, each adorned with about a six inch tall single horizontal orange stripe. The orange stripe is located on each shirt so as to create a single line at the same height running from student to student regardless of the height of each student.

This piece created by these students is amazing. It really hits at the core of the challenging concepts that are presented by the work exhibited at Dia. This project develops a sensitivity to one's environment and the moments that are created as we move through it.

Since students are forming the art themselves, "it enables them to feel part of the artwork," she said. Beacon resident Zack Ericson, 12, said the process of creating the different artworks was interesting. "You can take a space and create a new space," he said, of the striped T-shirts.
We could take this classroom and make it into seven different rooms," Ericson said. Hena Kalola, 13, of the Town of Wappinger, is looking forward to her next visit to Dia:Beacon, when the students will exhibit the art they've created.
Trad said it was important for his students to experience something other than traditional art such as landscapes. The use of space and how art can fit into it is something the students have embraced, he said. The experience will help students connect conceptual art with their surroundings, Trad added.
"The students are acting in it," he said.
Mosher said the art project helps develop students' language skills because they have to verbalize how they want the art to turn out.

The article alludes to the fact that the Rombout students' piece will be displayed soon, and I'm anxious to see it. Broadening their perceptions of their world, how they make connections, and how, as beings relating to other beings, they are engaged in the complex and dynamic form of collaboration that is a society are the benefits these kids are receiving, whether they're immediately conscious of it or not.
Opening the sense of possibility of altering one's space - of one's reality, that's a visceral process. You can't teach that in a lecture, but being able to witness and process abstract concepts through the poetry of an orange stripe linking students in a class can be powerful. The power really lies in the student's investment in that process of creating that poetry. Here's where the "my kid could do that" or "Christ, it's just a plywood box" comes in. It's sometimes less the resulting object than the involvement of creating that plywood box, which challenges the maker's notions of value, talent, art, beauty, etc. that breaks ground within the mind to be able to make powerful connections between the process of creating a "thing" and shaping one's life. These are difficult concepts, but witnessing the cause and effect inherent in the push and pull of conceiving an idea and trying to manifest that idea in some form is what the practice of art is. It's problem solving at it's most elemental form.
I applaud both of these programs which are offering the students of Beacon an opportunity for a deeper understanding of the world and equipping them with the ability to reflect on their roles within it.

Fovea Exhibitions Beacon Gallery launches program with talks by Ron Haviv

Fovea Exhibitions Beacon Gallery is launching an educational outreach program. This first endeavor in this program will happen Ron Haviv will be speaking with local junior high school students at the gallery on Friday Nov. 19.

The students are attending as a part of a local program designed to provide
lower-income youth with educational after-school alternatives to spending
time in the streets.

Earlier in the day, Haviv will be visiting with students of Beacon High and Washington High Schools.

Mr. Haviv is donating his time to educate these and other students on the plight
of the refugees in Darfur, including stories about young Sudanese teenagers
roughly the same age as the children to whom he will be lecturing. Mr. Haviv
will also be visiting the Beacon High School and Washingtonville High School
students earlier in the day. FOVEA is an educational charity designed to
promote awareness of international and domestic news events through the works
of photojournalism. It opened in May of this year, and this event marks the
start of FOVEA’s educational programs with regional schools and community
organizations.

For more information contact the directors:
Sabine Meyer 917 848 3436 SMeyer@FoveaEditions.Org
Stephanie Heimann 845 765 2199 Stephanie@FoveaEditions.Org

Children's art classes at Spire Studios

In To Art Class!

IntuArt School and the Beacon Cultural Foundation are proud to announce after-school art scholarships for young people in Beacon.

IntuArt is a small art school that was founded by art educator, Jennifer Sipple, this past summer in order to provide more art education opportunities for Beacon students ages 10-16.

Says Sipple, “Although Beacon has a flourishing art scene, there’s not all that much available to kids who want to make art. IntuArt is about providing the space, materials, and instruction for young people to learn and create… but that’s not all. Some of my long-range goals for the program include artist studio tours, student art exhibits in local galleries, and field trips to galleries and museums.”

This fall, IntuArt will be offering after-school classes on Mondays and Thursdays from 4:00-6:00 at Spire Studios on Beekman St. The first session starts on September 19.

In order to make these classes affordable for the majority of Beacon residents, the tuition has been kept as low as possible -- $95 per six-week session. But the real news is that some scholarships will be made available to students in need.

So far, the Beacon Cultural Foundation has taken the lead by funding three scholarships. Sam Yanes, President of the Foundation says, “Arts education is an important component of a vibrant community. We are pleased to help this effort in Beacon.”

A recruitment drive is under way to encourage local businesses and organizations to follow their lead. These sponsors can make tax-deductible contributions to the Beacon Cultural Foundation. In addition, if an organization or individual is able to provide just half of a scholarship, the Foundation will match that donation.

“More business participation means more student participation,” says Sipple. “Bringing Beacon’s art and business communities together for the sake of education.”

IntuArt’s 2005 Summer Art program was held at the old Beacon high school, now Bulldog Studios, which is run by the Beacon Cultural Foundation, and courses included: Drawing and Painting, 3-D Art and Sculpture, and Papermaking and Bookbinding. Over a three-week period, seventeen students ranging in age from 7 to 16 attended the program. (If interest is voiced for younger students to be able to attend the fall after-school classes, an additional session will be added for children ages 6-9.)

If you are a member of an organization that would like to sponsor a student or if you are a student who would like to attend IntuArt School, please call: 845-416-5608 or e-mail: jenalice@intuart.com. For online information visit www.intuart.com/jensipple.