Independence, use it wisely
- frida@artyardbklyn.org
- Jul 4
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 5
AYB Summer Session 2025
There are just a couple of random spots left, register on our website while you still can!
AYB Summer Session 2025
Migration: From Here to There
July 7–24 | 11:30am–3:30pm
At BWAC or on field trips as noted
Mon July 7 – Assata Benoit: Color Theory / Color Migration
Tue July 8 – Jacob Rath & Leni Silva: Small House Gallery – Hold Dear art making
Wed July 9 – Adji Kebe: FIELD TRIP to Jack Shainman Gallery to see work by Toyin Ojih Odutola, Marc Straus Gallery to see Renée Stout, and The Drawing Center to See Beauford Delaney. Bring sketchbooks!
Thu July 10 – Golnar Adili: Migration chosen/forced – artwork inspired by the keffiyeh and other traditional patterns
Week 2
Mon July 14 – M. Boucai: Movement and performance-inspired visual art
Tue July 15 – Jacob Rath & Leni Silva: Small House Gallery – Hold Dear art making
Wed July 16 – Adji Kebe: Travel by water, inspired by the film Atlantics by Mati Diop
Thu July 17 – Mia Lew: Creating stamps and passports
Week 3
Mon July 21 – Iviva Olenick: Immigration Landmarks
Tue July 22 – Jacob Rath & Leni Silva: Small House Gallery curate, document & promote
Wed July 23 – Adji Kebe: Migration in poetry and visual art
Thu July 24 – Ajani Russell: Jacob Lawrence & butterfly patterns + final celebration
What We Are Reading
After the usual BPL waitlist shuffle, I was thrilled to finally get my hands on Jordan Troeller’s Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury (MIT Press, 2023)—just in time for my June studio week. Ruth Asawa is an important role model for me. I hold a deep admiration for her work, her holistic approach to art, education, community and loved ones, as such it was wonderful to read into this thought provoking book!
Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury is a deeply researched, erudite radical reframing of midcentury art. Jordan Troeller's central argument—that motherhood shaped modernism, and that artist-mothers like Asawa were at its core. She carefully references and cites, writers, artists, radical thinkers, architects, scholars, feminists, poets, teachers…well, you get the drift! It particularly resonated for me that Troeller suggests we reframe the act motherhood, considering instead mothering as a verb, a creative force that anyone, of any gender, can enact. This concept echoes our recent exhibition, Earth Mothering, where we explored care as a creative act toward the planet itself.
Ruth Asawa with her sculptures and children, Ruth Asawa's wall of faces and sculptures, and
Ruth Asawa's public fountain in Ghirardelli Square.
The book dives into Asawa’s unwavering commitment to education and community-building with great examples and introduces many of the people from that vibrant community. The superb photographs of people, places and artworks are well chosen and help to deepen the story. In Asawa’s world, art, family, and civic engagement were not separate spheres, but a single interwoven practice of care.
Other Art News
AYB Artist Ajani Russel, Sudam and I went to see AYB Artist Abriel (bob) Gardner perform in Assembly at Center for Performance Research. It was a three-hour performance, a bit of an endurance test for the ensemble. Yet, Abriel (bob) danced with her usual flair, sense of joy which seem to propel her leaps and wind up through her out-stretched arms with most gestures. We noted that Bob was wearing her favorite color: stripes.
Afterwards we had a superb meal, soup to nuts, at Montesacro, Stairway to Heaven on the odd playlist as we tasted the last drop of our espresso.
AYB Artist Simone Awor writes: “Talking to Evelyn and all the AYB classes I’ve taken has really helped me find a process that works and is motivating me to work more!
Simone Awor, Blue Abstraction & Orange Abstraction, 2025, Watercolor on paper
AYB Artist Leah Eliopoulos has also been a roll in the studio! Interestingly noting that she often creates works with more than one orientation. Once again, she does this in this week’s jewel colored gem-like piece photographed below in two directions:
Leah Eliopulous, Untitled Abstraction, 2025, watercolor on handmade paper
Notre Dame junior and AYB Artist Suzanne Santiago came by yesterday to look at my now completed doll house installation Peer. Suzanne will be studying in London when my show goes up at Small House Gallery and has agreed to help with the installation!
Next in the process is printing a three-fold brochure to share with my fans, and recreating the mini-mini catalogues with the updated text.
As Eden will tell you, I rarely see movies — and can’t recall the last time I watched an animated one. But when AYB Visiting Poet Diana Rickard texted from Greece: “I saw a movie on the plane I loved so much I watched it twice. Flow. About a cat who survives a flood. Just watch it,” Lola and I did.
Use arrows to scroll to see Lola flowing with Flow. Ha!!
Flow, by Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis, is a stunning, dialogue-free animated film that follows a sleek Rik-colored, Lola-like cat through a post-human world flooded by water and overflowing with painterly beauty. As the cat joins forces with a dog, a lemur, an endearing small hoofed creature and a tall long-necked bird aboard a sailboat, the film quietly explores survival, solidarity, and the resilience of nature.
New AYB Merch available
New items have been added to our Redbubble Storefront including Pat’s Close the Fridge magnet & stickers created in Karla’s Illuminated Letter class, Travis' Poetic Mapping portrait of his friend performing from Ajula's recent zoom session, and Simone’s Reimagining the Scene painting created in Fatima’s session last week!
Click the link to get your own AYB Artist adorned notebooks, stickers and magnets!
Time to pull out that Old Chestnut -- my 4th of July fortune:
🩵💜❤️💛💙💚🩷
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