Snapshots in Giverny: a Hedgehog, beautiful Landscapes… Divine!
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| Wade sketches a local hedgehog. |
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| Alum Steve Forster presents his work for a critique. |
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| Titian at the Louvre. |
Expansion/Renovations: Connecting
Mike Smith, Operations Manager at the Academy, invites us to walk through the new opening which will connect the two buildings for the new New York Academy of Art.
Follow our blog and see regular updates on the project! See our Flickr page for more photos, and our YouTube page for more videos. Please click here to contribute to the project.
CE Offers Something for Everyone (Fall 2010)
A new year is starting (school year, that is) and Continuing Education at the Academy has many exciting new classes. Resolve to improve a technique, learn something new, and improve your studio skills. Click on a class below for scheduling details and enroll now.
Current MFA students and Alumni receive a 20% discount off tuition!
- Drawing & Painting Studio – Amber Sena, drawing; Shauna Finn, painting
- Absolute Beginners Drawing & Painting – Matt Miller
- Master Techniques: Painting the Figure – John Wellington
- Friday Atelier – Robert Armetta
- Academic Figure and Portrait Painting – Michael Smith
- Portrait Sculpture – Steve Shaheen
- Figure Drawing 101 – Hal Brooks
- Ecorche of the Horse – David Klass
- Intermediate and Advanced Painting the Figure – John Wellington
- Sculpting the Figure – Cynthia Eardley
- Absolute Beginners Drawing and Painting – John Cichowski
- Beginning Watercolors – Michiyo Fukushima
- The Bargue Method – Ard Berge
- Painting the Figure – Maggie Rose
- Landscapes & Seascapes – Steve Forster
- Forensic Sculpture – Joe Mullins
- Artistic Anatomy: Form and Structure – Robert Armetta
- Intermediate Drawing and Painting – Dennis Cheaney
- Painting & Drawing: Theory and Practice – Maggie Rose
- Figure Drawing and Painting – James Hoston
- Still Life Painting – Leah Lopez
- Absolute Beginners Drawing and Painting – Mark Opirhory
- Animal Sculpture – Will Kurtz
- Thinking in Color – Sarah Hall
To register, email John Cichowski – or call him at 212 966 0300 x968.
Sometimes You Have to Fight Fire with Water
by Jason Sho Green (MFA 2011)
My project for this residency began as an investigation of the evolution of memory.
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| “Third Prettiest Girl” |
Initially my concept was to do a series of paintings in Giverny, then stash them away and attempt to re-create the paintings from memory, then to do so over and over again until I arrived at a series that began with something completely from observation and ended with images completely fabricated from my memory. From that idea, my project has evolved into a similar thing dealing with memory but with the subject being a portrait of a young woman I know in NY, whose face I knew I wouldn’t see for the four weeks during my residency in Giverny and travels in Barcelona and Madrid.
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| Hill Top View |
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| Monet’s Gardens |
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| Musée d’Orsay |
But upon beginning work on this series, I found that the final paintings were too similar. I could draw her face too well from memory, however didn’t have the time during the residency (only 2 weeks) to fully explore and render the paintings.
Working in this vein, I have combined all the small linen panels I’d prepared (including the ones with already painted portraits) into one large canvas. I have been doing a panoramic painting of our large studio, capturing the movements of my studio mates and the architecture and light of our workspace. Hope this will capture both the evolution of my project and the passing of time as the other artists move in and out of the studio in the coming week.
A while back, an ex-girlfriend/model was looking at my paintings and said, “You’re going to hate this, but why don’t you just paint like you draw?” She was spot on. I had gotten stuck in one of those things where I got wrapped up in painting as I had been taught to paint in class and forgot that there are other ways to solve visual problems. Now I’m trying attack this conceptual problem with a technical strength. Switching it up from “fighting fire with fire” to “fighting fire with water” is how I think of it.
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| The studio… works in progress. |
I think we’re all perversely looking forward to the critiques with Wade Schuman. Everybody seems to have gotten a good start on their works: Ian has a butchered pig head in his studio for a still life, I have a canvas resembling Frankenstein that’s quickly being filled, Amber is working on some exciting drawings with all these odd French materials. It’s been sweet to get on an early start for the second and final year of our MFA program.
Expansion/Renovations: Press, Sculpture Studios, Ventilation
Mike Smith continues the tour of the Academy’s summer renovations and expansion. He highlights the new Griffon lithography press and takes us through the new sculpture studios in the Garden Level. He also steps into the dedicated classroom on 2nd floor, pointing out the new fresh air ventilation system.
Follow our blog and see regular updates on the project! See our Flickr page for more photos.
Please click here to contribute to the project.
End Days of Summer
August is a slow month in the art world as almost everyone is on vacation, however there are a couple of see-worthy openings this week:
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| R. Nicholas Kuszyk – click for a larger image |
If you are near the Academy in TriBeCa on Friday night (Aug 20) then check out this pop gallery opening featuring Nick Kuszyk at 186 Duane St. between Greenwich and Hudson from 6-10 pm. Kuszyk makes intricate, sometimes Bosch-like paintings of his ever-evolving robot society.
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| Francesco Longenecker |
On Saturday night (Aug 21), check out the opening of New Paintings curated by Academy alumna Renee Bovenzi. A snapshot of what artists are painting right now, it features many other alumni including Francesco Longenecker and Ali Banisadr. The show is at 560 Broadway, 3rd floor, Suite 305 and the opening is from 6-8 pm.
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| Aurel Schmidt |
If you are out East on Saturday night, then stop by the Fireplace Project in the Springs for Aurel Schmidt‘s solo show, opening from 6-8 pm. Schmidt makes beautiful drawings composed of decay and rot. Her work is included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial.
Also, don’t miss Glenn Horowitz in East Hampton with Will Cotton‘s amazing cake sculpture.
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| Will Cotton |
Start the Presses!
The printmaking program at the Academy is getting a big addition – as in a 1300 lbs. lithography press and several hundred pounds of litho stones!
This new equipment will facilitate a more robust printmaking curriculum offering a Printmaking track which will include courses such as “The Figure in Lithography†and “Narrative Printmaking.â€
Chair of Faculty and Printmaking coordinator, John Jacobsmeyer stands next to the Griffin Series I lithography press prior to its final installation in the printshop at the Academy.
For more information about the press and the new Printmaking track, please email John Jacobsmeyer.
Snapshots in Giverny
Faculty guide Wade Schuman shares some snapshots of things he likes in Giverny.
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| The Giveny Group: Gary, Ian, Jessie, Emily, Cara, Amber, Jason and Steve. |
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| A detail of Louis Brandin’s Jonah and the Whale at the Louvre. |
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| With a vase of roses, Emily Adams’ studio space at the Terra Foundation. |
A Rose is a Rose is a Rose
This is the opposite of the desert. Last week, I was in the Sinai Peninsula, where I spent some time drawing in the Blue Desert. In the 80s, artist Jean Verame made the actual desert landscape the canvas for an earth-art piece in honor of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty. The blue paint was still visible on some of the rocks that he painted, flaking from decades of exposure to the sun. Perhaps it is in contrast to this barren expanse that the flowers in France seem extra saturate in color and scent.
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| Rose Study, oil on color print on canvas (a study for the pieces I’m doing here) |
I have been painting roses. There were roses in the monks’ gardens at the Saint Catherine’s Monastery, roses in the early Byzantine-syle icons that have survived for centuries within the monastery walls, roses on the dress of a lady standing in line at the Egypt-Israel border, roses on the plastic-wrap of the airplane utensils.
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| After a long day, Steve, Wade, Cara, and Amber relax amongst Rubens at the Louvre |
Yesterday, instructor Wade Schuman took us all on a serious tour of the Louvre. In attempts to appease each of our druthers, we spent ample time with the Italians (fighting back the Mona-Lisa crowd in a valiant attempt to see the Veronese), with Rubens, with Corot and Millet, with Bosch and Memling, and the list goes on. I was, secretly, on a bit of a rose-hunt, finding it to be a most fruitful line tying together some of the most disparate of paintings.
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| Fra Angelico, Coronation of the Virgin |
A decadent rose-wreath from 16th-century Spain (Juan de Arellano) and a 19th-century French still-life (Fantin-Latour’s fleurs share, to my surprise, some of the same subject matter as a Fra Angelico. Afterwards, exhausted, we rested our weary legs with the Greeks before heading back to the train.
Now we are back in the garden, preparing for our first critique, taking place in just a few days.
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| Gary, Jessie, Jason and Steve sketch at sunset in the cornfields |
The Birds are Chirping; Time to Paint.
by Jessie Brugger (MFA 2010)
A couple days ago, I woke up at six in the morning with a bolt of energy, so I decided to go for a run through the town of Giverny. That might sound like a huge athletic feat, so I will leave it at that… Okay, truth is…The town is incredibly tiny. But it is incredibly packed full of life! Buzzing bees, gurgling cooing doves, little red insects that look like flattened lady bugs, chirping crickets. (You might guess that I am not a insect and wilderness “guru.” In fact; I think I have been in the city too long because the sound of silence is something that scares me out of my boots.) I have fallen in love with it here, though. It’s gorgeous and it’s an Artist’s Paradise. It’s lush and the colours are stunning, and the evening light warms up the whole countryside.
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Here’s a recap of yesterday at the Louvre…
Yesterday was Amazing! We were treated to a Lively, Entertaining, Educational filled tour by our fearless leader and Academy instructor Wade Schuman. We spent seven hours soaking in all the stories that Wade could give us about the artwork. Though there were about fifty billion tour guides there with leaders and flags, Wade refused to carry a flag and was adamant about counting his “ducklings†every time we reached a new painting. Even a girl from the Czech Republic stuck close with us to take in Wade’s entertaining lectures. I’ve never heard so many funny little anecdotes about artists’ personal lives and their relationship to their art.
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| Studio-mate Steve sinks into Peter Paul Rubens’ “The Landing of Marie de Medicis at Marseilles 1623-25” |
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| Wade snapped a photo of Jacopo Bassano’s “Two Hunting Dogs Tied to a Tree Stump” |
We left the Louvre to find some delicious French grub, and hot chocolate. I wandered off to find an ATM and got completely lost. That’s not the first time… and it probably won’t be the last – Paris is one of most beautiful cities because of the tiny little streets that wind in and around architecturally beautiful buildings. But for a person like me who gets lost in anything other than the ever-so-easy-to-understand New York grid, it’s very confusing, but who doesn’t want to get lost in Paris?
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| Ian’s still life – in real life. |
Tous bien, we made it back to Giverny happy and safe. Last night, a few of us walked up a hill at midnight to watch the meteor showers. I have never seen so many stars in my life. It was beautiful.
Today is a work day. Off to the studios! I am working on drawings and maquettes that I am turning into a stop animation. Next to me in the studios, Ian has a chicken, into which he has made one of the most beautiful still lifes. Everyone here has such a different approach to their artmaking and that makes it very exciting and inspiring.
We have a crit with Wade soon; so gotta get to work.
À plus tard, Cheers!