Appreciative
Updated: 54 minutes ago
We are thrilled to report that Saturday’s opening party for Ajani Russell: Drawing The Line at The Gallery at 180 Franklin Avenue was a great success!
People responded enthusiastically to Ajani’s drawings, and we had a wonderful turnout including AYB Artists, family and friends, community members and building residents. We served refreshments and Joe was the perfect bar tender, we decorated the tables with flowers and flameless candles, and the whole space had such a great energy! Several drawings sold and every one had spectacular time!!
Our sincere gratitude to Olivier Berggruen, Neah Grey, Sebastian LaBossiere, Brandon McClain, Kyra Trippens-Richan, and Muss Development LLC for making this exhibition possible.
We carried on with the shared joy and laughter this week in Advanced Studio on Zoom with Jacob Rath presenting a session on Hand Drawn/Painted Movie Posters.
Jacob recaps: “I began class with a PowerPoint presentation of movie posters. In the first half of the presentation, we looked at Old Hollywood and Soviet movie posters. We discussed how these posters communicated a sense of genre to the viewer.
We then looked at hand painted Ghanaian movie posters. Hand painted posters common in Ghana, because printing large posters was not feasible. These posters did not accurately represent what the movie was about. Often, these posters included more snakes, explosions, or weapons than the actual film, making them appear more like action movies. The poster for Jaws had a drawing of Chuck Norris holding a machine gun, even though Chuck Norris is nowhere to be found in the film.
Stoger, Barbie Royal Gate Video Ashaiman and The God Father. Hand Drawn posters
The group came up with some incredible movie posters. Pat, Richie, Kevin, Jacob, and TJ all made posters which purposefully misrepresented the genre of the movie it represented.
Richard Lee Chong, and Kevin Anderson, Obsession
Vee and Travis made posters for movies that they imagined.
Vee Tineo, Awake l & ll
Adji drew a potato sack, and then drew her movie poster on the sack, since the Ghanaian posters are painted on old flour sacks. After seeing Adji’s completed piece Travis commented: “Love it!! It’s even better in color and funnier because I think the person with @ “this is HIPHOP” is from a dance video teaching dance.”
Flo, Meridith, and Leah depicted favorite movies from memory.
Ed updated a classic.
During the lesson, we had a discussion about how in the age of AI generated images, people are more appreciative of hand-drawn images. Even a small note that is handwritten with a doodle on it shows more soul and personality than anything generated by AI.”
Advanced Studio in Person worked up on the roof deck at 180 Franklin Avenue with Chris Allen depicting multiple figures in dynamic poses. Chris put together an excellent array of images to act as inspiration:
Chris summarizes: “The goal of Tuesday’s class was to create multi-figure compositions while considering the negative space created by the forms. Referencing a history of figure painting from Henry Taylor to Caravaggio, a great deal can be gleaned from how painters dial between abstraction and realism when depicting bodies to create compelling spatial composition.
Participating artists were provided various drawing implements; pencil, colored pencil and oil pastel, to meet their specific intentions. With a prompt so simple and a number of avenues to explore there was a great deal of variation in the end results. From vibrant emotional works like Ajani’s to very calculated and detailed compositions like Ed Rath’s, the subjectivity of human and animal bodies were deeply considered in each piece made during the lesson.”
Sebastian LaBossiere, Meditating, Leah Eliopulos, Advanced Studio, Kevin Anderson, Torture Chamber, Jules Lorenzo, Walking The Dog, Dylan Gomez, Soccer World Cup, Florian Kiniffo-Neven du Mont, Barber Shop, Dalanny Gomez, Rainbow Girls
ART YARD Art Matters in the School
Dennis Buonagura reports: “Our action packed 3 week (5 days a week - less one day for Rosh Hashanah) programming cycle at The President Barack Obama School (#34) in Jersey City has come to a close. We served about 200 students each week - and will be back soon with a bunch of new cycles scheduled for one day per week for about 10-12 weeks (depending on budget). We are also participating in their Fall Festival later in October - an outdoor art event (!!!).
It amazes me how public school art teachers do this all on their own - most times without any assistance from a teacher's aide or student teacher every day of the week. I brought in Art Yard Bklyn's village - Teaching Artists Evelyn Beliveau and Leo Emabat (on alternating days) with support from Simone Awor and Denzel Jeter (also on alternating days) and it was still a ton of work. We host so many students in the course of one day, it would be nearly impossible to teach, conduct traffic, keep them focused and encourage, and not to mention set-up and clean-up - without a team. PS 34’s fantastic art teacher, Marilyn Carpena, is also in the mix to help our days run smoothly.
Teaching at PS 34
Denzil, Simone, and I will go back this Tuesday to mat and install some of the work on the boards outside the art and music rooms to show off the work. Then we await our date to start the new cycles.
This week, Evelyn concluded her Hilma af Klint lesson with expert presentations and demonstrations on watercolor painting techniques. Classes are short (45 minutes) and we do not want students to rush (especially while painting) so most all finished their pieces inspired by Hilma's works while some will finish on a planned 'make-up' day. Lots of pastel colors, softly painted, the proper overlapping of shapes and lines, and many added-on details. The works were completed on various sizes of watercolor paper - Evelyn chose which sizes were best suited for the grade levels. Younger students tend to draw big - so they were given the largest sized paper - etc.
Scroll through these student paintings! You will be amazed!
On each Wednesday, we had 6 classes back-to-back (less a 45 minute lunch break) and without a sink in the art room, Simone and Denzel made lots of trips back and forth to the teacher's lounge to fill up water buckets - and clean brushes. We all surely put in our steps for each day - especially on Wednesdays.
Leo also wrapped up his lesson, inspired by the works of Sol Lewitt, on Tuesday - we are all happy with the successes of his students and look forward to displaying their works for all to see. Some of Leo's students are kindergartners - who don't travel to the art room - making Art Yard into a mobile art-making partnership. We travel thru the halls with pencils, paper, glue, scissors, paper towels, sharpies, brushes - you name it!
On a further note - all contracts are IN for this new school year with the JC Board of Ed so it's a matter of being scheduled with start dates. It's a slow and red-tape filled process - but we have all the principals on our side to get things moving.
Where's that PHEW emoji when I need it??
Also, on a tangent - in the Broadway musical "Rent" (loosely based on Puccini's opera "La Boheme"), the opening line of the now iconic song "Seasons Of Love" includes lyrics about how to measure a year: "In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in a life?”. Well my iPhone calculator probably can't multiply the minutes of MY life without my adding more memory - but it's nice to know that I was remembered when adding yet another 525,600 minutes to miy timeline. THANKS for this gorgeous card and the good wishes.”
Happy Birthday Dennis!
What We Are Reading
Related to my review last week of Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women, I (Meridith) was excited to see her September 25 New York Times review, “A Superb American Artist Is Finally Getting Her Due.”
Gabriel knows Lee Krasner’s work intimately, having spent seven years studying her and the other women of the Abstract Expressionist generation. And yet, she writes, seeing Krasner’s 2019 retrospective at London’s Barbican left her almost breathless. The paintings were “so emphatic, so alive” that even Gabriel was unprepared for their power.
What makes her review so compelling is that it is also a reckoning with the persistent idea of the “artist’s wife.” Krasner was Jackson Pollock’s wife, but she was also his artistic peer: a formidable painter, activist and central figure in the New York art world. Gabriel makes clear how often Krasner’s own work was overlooked simply because she was married to a more famous male artist.
That makes the Met’s upcoming exhibition especially intriguing. Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous runs October 4, 2026–January 31, 2027, bringing the two artists together in the first major joint retrospective of their work.
Gabriel sees the decision as both daring and brilliant. Put Krasner beside Pollock and, rather than disappearing into his shadow, she emerges more fully as the artist she was. I think we should plan a field trip!
Other Art News
We were grateful to be invited to participate in the Educator Open House at The Whitney Museum on Thursday evening. Kevin Anderson and Briana Camacho attended.
Kevin reports: “I was pleasantly surprised after attending the Whitney Museum Open house yesterday. It was a good turnout of various artists from different backgrounds: it appeared that teachers, entrepreneurs, and even hobbyists were at the event. Brianna and I explored some of the museum, and were delightfully treated to various art pieces throughout the building. We also got to share some of our art experiences with one of the attendants. This event felt like a good opportunity to meet new people and explore the various programs held within the facility (and the food was good too).”
Mia Lew writes from RISD: “I’ve been loving textiles! Very glad I chose to be in the department. I’ve been adoring machine knitting. These are machine knit samples. They are all from photo reference as observing Providence is the theme of the class.
Mia Lew, Reference photos, experimenting with the knitting machine, & using CAD
I’ve also been learning to spin and dye and use CAD. I am in the CAD lab right now working on a stripe design. This is based on a crayon drawing I did and I like that the class combines the digital with handwork, though knitting is still a bit more exciting.”
Travis Pereira has been “working out some art concepts and on some figure studies using water color. These are still in progress.”
Travis Pereira, New work in progress
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