This week in Advanced Studio on Zoom Teaching Artist Aisha Tandiwe Bell presented a session called Staying in Line. We began by looking at work by Frank Stella and Victor Vasarely.
Aisha asked us to experiment in the materials of our choice with line as pattern, creating images that play with repetition, rhythm, texture and composition creating four pages of source material which we then cut and rearranged as a collage on a paper bag, brown paper or other colored paper ground.
Work by Zeke Brokaw, Wayne Gross, Vera Tineo, Pat Larash, Robin Grant, Meridith McNeal, Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Madison Mack, Marilyn August and Delphine Levenson:
Aisha says: “I thought the class went well. I was worried because I did not really get to show my reference videos because of technical issues but it was nice to have more time to make the work. I was also a little concerned by the degree of openness I left in the lesson but the output was quite beautiful. I really liked the 3 dimensional sculpture Meridith made. That may influence my next lesson!”
This week we moved into our new home base at the amazing Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC) in Red Hook, Brooklyn. As ART YARD Artist Robin Grant writes: “It is truly a grand opportunity!😍”
ART YARD Advanced Studio now takes place on the second floor of BWAC’s huge gallery space located on the pier at the end of Van Brunt Street.
Our first session in this inspiring space was led by Teaching Artist and BWAC member Candy Heiland. Candy introduced her lesson for the year of healing by talking about the ways in which art could heal: to inspire, to calm, to communicate to others when words would not suffice. She relayed her own personal experience by being brought out of a deep depression with her art. Robin added her own story of the power of art to heal in her life.
Candy discussed the things that could stop us from creating: perfectionism, criticism of ourselves and by others. She designed this lesson to approach those times by introducing the element of play. There were whimsical figurines and small toys for us to draw from life. This week we would investigate the process of creating images from observation of actual things.
Candy explains: “In this cycle over the next several weeks, we will investigate other methods of gathering images: photographs, memory and imagination. The overall idea is to try them all, to see how they differ and to respect the techniques that work best for each individual. Most of all, we want to be able to trust our own vision and means of working as valuable!”
At ART YARD Art Matters at Brooklyn New School, students continued their observational drawings of flowers and plants from the school's garden center. Teaching Artist Fatima Traore (together with Teaching Artist Richard Estrin, subbing for Dennis) discussed colors, composition, and textures. Using a variety of types of colored pencils (soft, hard) with the greatest quantity being Prismacolor shades of greens, students brought their pencil drawings to life.
Richard summaries the lesson: “The students assessed their drawings from last week. Having observed nature intensively in the previous lesson, they took their experiences of deep looking and elaborated. Fatima had reproductions (photographs) of some of the flowers they had observed in the garden center to jog their memories.
In their elaborations, the students focused on using colored pencils to describe local color and texture. Several chose to contrast the colored pencil with graphite and many imagined backgrounds to round out their experience.
It was a beautifully sunny but cool and windy day. The kids worked very hard to keep in focus, and the dazzling sun and crisp air gave the afternoon a true "autumn in New York" feel.”
Jennifer McGregor, Project Director/Curator at STAR - Storefront Arts Recovery Initiative of Tribeca Film Institute, writes: “It's really exciting to have this project complete. I can't thank you enough for the inspiration, hard work and problem solving that you brought to the project. It all paid off!”
Your Flowers Are So Lovely They Have Made Me Well Again -- paintings by ART YARD Artists Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Evelyn Beliveau, Flávia Berindoague, Richard Estrin, Jennifer Dodson, Sarah Gumgumji, Susan Hamburger, Candy Heiland, Jane Huntington, Maraya Lopez, Meridith McNeal, Claude Viaud Peralta, Ed Rath, Jacob Rath, Marie Roberts, Nayarit Tineo, Vera Tineo, Fatima Traore, and Rachael Wren -- is on view at 339 Adams Street in Downtown Brooklyn through March 2022.
Our silent auction items and art raffle are now live! The $5 Fish Art Raffle is for a piece I created during an ART YARD Advanced Studio session lead by Guest Artist Carol Alden.
Knitted Fish by Carole Alden which inspired Fish by Meridith McNeal NOW ON RAFFLE!
Several ART YARD Artists enthusiastically suggested they would like to have this piece on their wall -- so we decided to make it an raffle item! The winner will be drawn at our Les Amis de ART YARD benefit on Saturday November 13, 2021.
Here's to another GRAND week at ART YARD BKLYN,
