With Pizzazz
- frida@artyardbklyn.org
- 5 days ago
- 10 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
We are finally at that verdant time of the season. That astonishing green which sets a tone for the creative energy of AYB on zoom, in the studio, in the school and out in the world. Our inspiration has been far reaching as we explore the work of other artists, learn new techniques, and dive into philosophical discourse. As Evelyn puts it below, we did it with pizzazz!
We started the week in ART YARD Advanced Studio on Zoom with AYB Artist Karla Pricket presenting Cut and Paste: Drawing with Collage. The session included a studio tour, demonstrations, tips, conversation, and collaging.
Karla writes: “Thank you, Meridith, for suggesting a studio tour/collage demo lesson. I have participated in AYB from my Kansas studio since the pandemic began, and the question often comes up: where do I keep all the materials I incorporate into my work? An assortment of cubbies, flat files, and shallow drawers helps organize and store work while it waits to be mounted and framed—making a large, small space. It was good to share some of my larger studio pieces.
Karla's studio table and cabinet with supplies
My grandfather’s work as an architect shaped my interest in pre-computer illustration, especially mechanical and industrial imagery. While sorting through his drawings and studio supplies, I realized how easily his handwork and tools could have been discarded. These were the things I found compelling as a child. I decided to incorporate his drawn elements into my own work. He introduced me to art museums and supported my pursuit of an art degree. I sign my work Stangel, his last name and my maiden name.
I was struck by the work created during the Zoom session. Each artist applied techniques from the lesson in their own way. Examples by Henri Matisse, Betye Saar, Mark Bradford, Maria Berrio, Evita Tezeno, and myself showed different approaches to line and shape through collage.
It was interesting to see the range of materials used. The prompt to ‘think of your scissors as your pencil’ opened up ways to explore line through edges, texture, color, and shape. Artists drew on personal experience, family, community, nature, and shared themes.
Jules used magazine clippings to build a narrative around a deconstructed house. The layering and color create depth and a near three-dimensional effect.
Marilyn’s piece initially reads like metal or enamel. Circular bird images form foliage in a landscape. The outline of a cat becomes part of a tree and frames one of the circles, guiding the composition.
Jane used elements from past work—white, umber, blue, and black-and-white—to construct a portrait behind vine-like forms from tree imagery. The layering creates depth and movement.
Aaron developed a plan based on Matisse’s cut-outs. The final work suggests continental landmasses—Pangaea—set against a blue ground, with gestural lines echoed in the composition.
Adji created two works, a digital sketch and a pencil drawing inspired by Saar. The gestural figures suggest motion. Yellow elements draw attention in the digital piece. The black-and-white drawing begins to explore shape in clothing. Both suggest music and movement.
Adji Ngathe Kebe, Personal Experience Collage
Abriel (bob) focused on cut-out shapes and drawing with scissors. Folded notebook paper produced mirrored, inkblot-like forms. The color and texture are subtle, with potential for use as individual or grouped elements.
Abriel (bob) Gardner, Personal Experience Collage
Pat created a collage from a visit to Seville, Spain, using maps and imagery. Text functions as texture against bold color. Hexagonal shapes shift between foreground and background. A vertical black line divides and balances the composition.
Travis used advertising and sewing patterns to build a fashion-based figure. The work explores movement and positive/negative space, using existing outlines and contrasts as drawn elements.
Meridith applied collage to a miniature, multi-page book about her first residency in Rome. It includes collage elements from The New Yorker and will be included in the library of the AYB at 180 dollhouse for our exhibition opening Mayb 16th. Meridith groused about the challenge of working with glue.
Meridith McNeal, Personal Experience Collage
Nayarit’s digital collage considers future evolution beyond Earth. Color and black areas structure depth and separation.
Leah created a narrative about a day with her sister using images from art magazines. A brown-toned background references Australian Aboriginal brush imagery (1912–1935), contrasting with two central figures.
Fatima combined drawn lines and cut shapes in a palette of retro colors. The composition builds movement, with attention to clothing textures and facial structure.
My (Karla) work focuses on communication over time, from cursive writing and typewriters to phones and keyboards. I used my father’s typewriter to include the phrase ‘now is the time for all good,’ taken from a typing exercise. I stopped at ‘good.’ Other elements come from his 1930s schoolwork, some marked ‘good.’ My grandmother’s letters were all typewritten.
I agree with Pat—there was more to discuss than time allowed. Thank you, everyone.”
Tuesday with AYB Artist Assata Benoit we enjoyed a soul satisfying session in Advanced Studio in person at 180 Franklin Avenue.
Assata writes: “Tuesday’s session was a lesson based on the migration of Black music in and through art. I’ve been leaning into Black culture for this year’s theme because it feels right—and I can’t help it. My life has always involved migration. My family, food, clothes, friends, and music come from different places, and I’m always adding to that list. I think that’s true for many people.
Objectively, a person’s music taste may be the most diverse thing about them.
For the in-person class, I used a mix of two mediums to guide the lesson. After looking at selected artworks and images—Sugar Shack by Ernie Barnes, Rhythm Band–Harlem by Elizabeth Olds, Divided Soul by David Allan Henry, along with references to Marvin Gaye and Soul Train—the prompt was to make visual work based on sound. The idea was to translate the feeling of the music into an image, like an album cover.
I chose music that spans generations and could connect with different age groups, while allowing for a range of responses depending on what each person responded to.
We listened to artists including Earth, Wind & Fire, Outkast, Thundercat, Rihanna, Aaliyah, Theophilus London, Michael Jackson, and more. I’m sharing the playlist as well. (links below!)
It’s been a while since I’ve taught in person, and it makes a difference to see people working and responding in real time. Sometimes I can anticipate where a piece might go, but this group brought a lot of unexpected directions. There’s a range of work that came out of it.”
Click links to listen to Assata’s playlist on Spotify or Applemusic
as you view the artwork!
Soul by Sebastian LaBossiere, Kevin Anderson, Jacob Rath, Fisola Famuyiwa, Dylan Gomez, Delanny Gomez, Cheyenne Rivera, Briana Camacho, Assata Benoit.
Meridith McNeal, Soul (miniature book), excerpt
It continued to be a bountiful, busy and productive week in ART YARD Art Matters in the School partnerships, yielded a great range of wonderful art making, new learned techniques, and erudite conversation.
AYB Teaching Artist Evelyn Beliveau writes: “This week at PS 17, Dennis, Simone, and I (Evelyn) met with our classes in Grades 4, 7, 1 and 2 to conduct the third week of each class’s lesson cycle.
Grade 4 finished up their shoe designs with pizzazz! This lesson taught students the gridding method for creating a line drawing based on a reference image, with the subject of footwear connecting to our Year of Migration. Students started with pencil on gridded paper, drawing pairs of shoes and then adorning them with creative details; then, they added Sharpie outlines, erased the pencil lines, and carefully painted in bright colors with brush-tipped acrylic paint markers. As the final step, they cut out their shoes around the outer contours, creating shaped artworks that will really pop on the gallery walls in the end-of-year exhibition. As students finished their pieces, small groups joined Simone at a side table to conduct critique, drawing comparisons and contrasts and offering compliments to each other. We admired students’ precisions cutting abilities and smooth shading with the paint markers.
Grade 7 is working on acrylic paintings with linear perspective, featuring roads leading to the horizon. Many students are painting slowly and carefully, so we’ve decided to extend the lesson by a week so they can finish up—with 45 minute class periods, it’s tricky to fit in the extra setup and cleanup necessary for acrylic paints, but our students made the most of the time. Each student began the project with a similar basic composition, featuring a horizon line and two edges of a road converging on a vanishing point. Then, each student added different details to create an imagined location. As they moved from pencil under-drawings on canvas panels into acrylic paint, each chose a time of day to depict, with varying color palettes for day, sunrise/sunset, or night.
Grades 1 and 2 finished their collage projects inspired by the jazz-fueled artwork of Romare Bearden. During the first two weeks of the lesson cycle, they drew or traced and cut out colorful paper shapes representing musicians, musical instruments, hands, and faces, then used glue sticks to layer their cut-outs onto a paper sheet of a contrasting color. On the final day, they used acrylic paint markers to add details (many adding facial features and hair to their musicians), lines of motion beside dancing figures, or sound waves emanating from singing faces. We wrapped up the busy day with comparisons, contrasts, and compliments for these bright, movement-filled artworks.
AYB Teaching Artist Jules Lorenzo recaps today's ART YARD Art Matters at PS 6: “Happy to report that we are now in week 2 of our Home: Here, There, Everywhere lesson, where students at our Jersey City Partnership school PS 6 have been working on fabric collages. These pieces are meant to represent items that depict interpretations of home and identity. Last week students created reference sketches of their items, with most students moving onto the next step of their lesson which was to figure out their color palette for their collages. We even had some superstars graduate all the way up to beginning their collages! Which was the main focus of today’s class work: LET THE COLLAGE EXTRAVAGANZA COMMENCE!
I was grateful to be assisted again today by lovely Simone Awor, who truly helps to bring out the best of every student with a kind and guiding manner. I also received help from teaching artist in training Chris Allen, whose calm and gentle demeanor encouraged students to explore various different ideas for their pieces. We had supervision from the always insightful and pragmatic AYB Managing Director Dennis Buonagura.
We did a quick review of our presentation from last week on the fabric sculptures by Do Ho Suh and multi-media collages by Judy Bowman. After discussing vocab words we learned like, “Collage” and “Repurpose,” the class was instructed to work primarily on their fabric collages! If they didn’t start already from last week, today was the day!
Before we started class work, I made sure to remind the students to focus on creating the base shapes of their designs, and then adding on alllll the little details later!
Students would select up to 5 different pieces of fabric to start their collage, and then begin cutting and glueing.
We had a few students that weren’t in attendance for the first lesson and caught up almost immediately! By the end of their ART YARD session, they were already putting together fabric on paper.
We had several Rubber Ducky collages.
Some students received the prompt of pets.
A bath tub with a shower attached that a student made full of different patterns!
Simone helping students cut out difficult shapes.
Chris jumped right in to assist students in need!
A bookshelf in the works!
Hope you’re not too hungry because we have some very tasty looking treats on this table!
Once the students were done creating their home related item, they were instructed to make a fabric border and fill in the background with additional fabric.
We’re looking forward to the thrilling conclusion of our collage masterpieces!”
Other Art News
AYB Artist Ajani Russell went to see New Humans: Memories of the Future the inaugural exhibition in the newly reopened expanded New Museum.
Ajani’s favorite pieces include: Toyin Ojih Odutola, Semblance of Certainty from A Countervailing Theory, 2019; Janiva Ellis, Catchphrase Coping Mechanism, 2019; Tatsuo Ikeda Mask Bird, 1958-2008. Photos Ajani Russell
Ajani writes: “I liked how the show felt invested in the corporeal—politically, socially, emotionally—rather than just the figure. The work felt intimate and personal while still operating at a larger scale, which can be difficult to achieve. The wall color choices were smooth and supported the work.
The curation felt cohesive and included a broad range of perspectives across different topics. Seeing Wangechi Mutu across from Salvador Dalí was unexpected, and I didn’t realize I wanted to see their work in the same room.”
Wangechi Mutu, Morgause, 2023, and Salvador Dali, Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 1943. Photos Ajani Russell.
I (Meridith) visited the Jewish Museum, where I enjoyed two temporary exhibitions. Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds, focusing on late works including paintings, drawings, and sketches spanned the second floor. Two life-size photographs of Paul Klee in his studio are installed in the galleries, creating a sense of his presence. One of my favorite curatorial moments is a small wall which paired several fruit images depicted in strange unexpected color which appeared to glow.
On the first floor, Joan Semmel: In the Flesh is a comprehensive exhibition of paintings from over a 60-year span by feminist icon Joan Semmel. The exhibition includes a large-scale recent painting (done as Semmel approaches 90 years old) which has to be about 20 feet wide. Also on view are Semmel’s selections from the museum’s collection which places her work in context and dialogue with others. I loved a corner installation moving from a photograph by Gordon Parks of Helen Frankenthaler in her studio to a portrait by Alice Neel.
Joan Semmel, Sunlight 1978 (detail) and installation view Semmel's selections
In AYB we’ve been in ongoing conversation about feminism—what Joan Morgan refers to in the first chapter of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down as “the F-word.” Semmel’s work connects directly to that history, emerging from the 1970s New York art world.
After a long walk through oh-so-verdant Central Park, I was thrilled to have be invited to see Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum Theatre.
Having grown up in the theater, cabaret theater in particular, may have ramped up my appreciation for Cole Escola’s high camp production. By the time John Cameron Mitchell (of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame) decked out in sequins and sparkly high heels was melodramatically singing a medley spanning from Lola to I’m a Little Teapot then into several verses of Miss American Pie I was roaring with laughter.
💚🩵💙
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