A Look Inside The Art Lab

 

Part of the KidsArt exhibition, Recreating the Art Lab is the visual culmination of the collaboration between BRIC and the students at Juan Morel Campos Secondary School in Williamsburg. This collaboration was made possible through an Empire State Partnership Grant (ESP), funded by NYSCA. Since launching our ESP with Campos in 2006, we have created a sustained learning community that integrates the visual arts into the school’s broader curriculum and mission. In 2007 we inaugurated a gallery to showcase student art created in residencies. In the past year we transformed the gallery into an Art Lab, welcoming all of Campos to visit.

A view of the Art Lab

 The works on display are the re- creation of this spring’s English Language Arts exhibition at the Art Lab at the school, addressing different themes through various projects. One such project is entitled Finding Active Change through Diagram and Design. Students worked with artist teacher Angela Early and classroom teacher Adam Davidson to create accordion books using simple and colorful materials. These books documented a process of personal investigation of changes in their lives, using tools such as Venn diagrams to project the positive aspects over the negative ones. On the back of accordion books, students wrote statements about these changes, and how they would accomplish them.

A visitor engages with the accordion books- photo by Campos student Cody Castro

The resulting art work demonstrates the diverse array of concerns that the students face on an every day basis. These issues range from thinking about science or math in a more positive light to expressing the desire to eradicate gang violence in their neighborhoods. These thoughts challenge us to consider the lives of not only these students in Brooklyn, but also youths throughout the country.

Pequeño Planeta at KidsArt 2009

Pequeño Planeta, Cuba

Every year BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn presents KidsArt, our showcase of artwork created by Brooklyn public school students. The projects that fill the space and adorn the walls of BRIC Rotunda Gallery (May 20, 2009 – June 12, 2009) are the culmination of academic and contemporary art instructions provided through school-based partnerships between BRIC Contemporary Art Educators, public school classroom teachers, school administrators, and Brooklyn students of all ages.

Pequeño Planeta, Canada

One project this year gave fifth-grade students at PS 119, The Magnet School for Global and Ethical Studies in Midwood the opportunity to participate in an exciting international art exchange program. Through Pequeño Planeta (Little Planet), students ages 5 to 11 from Canada, Cuba, and in Brooklyn use the visual arts to exchange ideas and perspectives about the world around them on the theme of environment. The artwork has been displayed in all three countries this year, culminating at BRIC.

Pequeño Planeta, Brooklyn

“The highlight for the students was Skyping with the Cuban artist Jose Aramndo and Canadian team and seeing the Cuban student work for the fist time,” notes Director of Education Hawley Hussey. “Knowing their work was well received in Camaquey, Santiago and Canada was a thrill.  They tracked the show on a map and sent postcards to all the participating students wishing them well from Brooklyn!”

Pequeño Planeta, Cuba

Pequeño Planeta is part of the Cuban-Canadian Green Bridge Project, which hopes to unite artists from across North America to show and exchange ideas and perspectives through the visual arts on a theme of global concern – the environment

GLOBAL COOLING: THE WOMEN CHILL

Global warming–do you find it chilling? Let the artists of the Women’s Project Lab lead you on a journey through the World Financial Center.  GLOBAL COOLING: THE WOMEN CHILL explores environmental awareness through six short theater pieces that use spoken word, song, dance, yoga, and repurposed garbage.  The event features an installation of sculptures and biomorphic forms created of everyday objects by artist Annie Boyden Varnot and curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, with support from  BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn.

June 3-6, 2009
Wednesday through Friday at 1:00 & 7:00 p.m.
Saturday at 1:00, 4:00 and 7:00 p.m.

At the World Financial Center
220 Vesey Street in Lower Manhattan

Free Admission!

KidsArt Opens!

KidsArt opened on May 20th!   Check out more pictures from the opening on our flickr!   The exhibition is curated by Hawley Hussey and features the art of students from Brooklyn, Canada, and Cuba.  Brooklyn schools include: 

Charles O. Dewey MS 136 Middle School, Sunset Park

Green School, East Williamsburg

IS 49, East Williamsburg

Juan Morel Campos Secondary School, Williamsburg

Middle School for Art and Philosophy, Brownsville, Brooklyn

PS 8, Brooklyn Heights

PS 119, The Magnet School of Global and Ethical Studies, Midwood

 

Thanks to everyone who came to the opening and to to everyone who worked so hard to make this year’s KidsArt a success.  If you couldn’t make it to the opening, don’t despair!  KidsArt will be on view at BRIC Rotunda Gallery through June 12th, 2009, and don’t miss our upcoming KidsArt Public Programs:

KidsDay

Saturday, May 30, 2009, 1–4 pm  An afternoon of free art-making activities for all ages led by professional Artist Teachers.Film Screening: Dear Mr. President

Film Screening: Dear Mr. President

Tuesday, June 2 at 7 pm  Dear Mr. President, by documentary filmmaker Debra Sugerman chronicles the voyage of five artistic young women, from the regions of Israel and Palestine, across the United States.

Are you an emerging curator?

The deadline for the Lori Ledis Emerging Curator Program has been extended to Monday, June 1. If you are an emerging curator and are interested in preparing an exhibition for the Project Room at BRIC Rotunda Gallery you have a few extra weeks to create a proposal.

More information about the program on the Gallery’s website.

El Anatsui: Process and Project Closes

Peak Project, 1999

In essence then, this aesthetic is about fluidity of ideas and impermanence of form, and indeterminacy, as well as giving others the freedom, or better still, the authority to try their hands at forming what the artist has provided as a starting point, a datum. -El Anatsui

Due to unforeseen circumstances El Anatsui: Process and Project is closed as of April 29th. We apologize for any inconvenience.

The exhibition, organized by the Museum for African Art, marked an exciting collaboration between BRIC Contemporary Art and the museum. The show started off with a jamb-packed opening, was a feature of NYC Immigrant Heritage Week . Highlights also included a public lecture and discussion of El Anatsui’s work at the Brooklyn Historical Society and a visit by the renown poet and scholar Obiora Udechukwu.

If you were intrigued by this show’s focus on process and transformation and want to experience the artist’ large-scale works, don’t miss El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa, a major retrospective of the artist’s career. Organized by the Museum for African Art, it will be the inaugural exhibition at the Museum’s new building on Museum Mile in Manhattan, set to open in 2010.

Until then be sure to check out the Museum for African Art’s roster of upcoming public programs, which include lectures, festivals, music, film, and dance taking place through the spring and summer. Festivities include the South African Freedom Day Festival in Fort Greene’s Cuyler Gore Park, on Saturday, May 2nd!

African Art in NYC

In honor of the El Anatsui: Process and Progress exhibition that will be up until May 2nd here at the Gallery, we decided to research some other contemporary African Art events going on in New York.

Currently on view at the Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea is a two-part show called Zwelethu Mthetha: New Works and Zwelethu Mthetha.

Mthethwa is a photographer from South Africa who is known for his large format color prints. New Works is composed of photos from two series titled “Contemporary Gladiator” and “Coal Miner.” In Shainman’s smaller exhibition space is the self-titled show that boasts pieces from a variety of Mthethwa’s various series. These are on view until May 23rd.

Jack Shainman Gallery 513 West 20th Street, New York.

Up at the Contemporary African Art Gallery on Riverside Drive and 108th Street is an exhibition of Viye Diba’s mixed media pieces. Diba uses transparent colored layers of paint and found objects to reference Africa’s poverty and beauty. You can virtually view the show by going to this site or you can schedule an appointment by calling Bill Karg and Reese Fayde (212) 749-8848 or (212) 662-8799.

Back here in Brooklyn is MoCADA, located at 80 Hanson Place in Fort Greene, where you can take a look at Johannesburg to New York the first retrospective of the collaborative work between South African artist Samson Mnisi and New York artist Cannon Hersey. If you’re in Brooklyn on Saturday May 2nd, you could check out the South African Freedom Day Festival, a 15 year anniversary celebration of the end of the apartheid in South Africa. (Don’t forget, that’s the same day Process and Project closes here, so definitely check us out too!) More information about Johannesburg to New York and the South African Freedom Day Festival can be found at mocada.org

Lastly, remember The Museum for African Art, the co-producers of our current show, will be moving into their new building next year on Museum Mile, and you can expect to see an El Anatsui retrospective as one of their opening shows. Be sure to stay connected with the museum during their construction by checking their website. africanart.org

El Anatsui Installation Shots

Photographs of the current exhibition at BRIC Rotunda Gallery, on view through May 2.

Signatures, 2005. Photograph: Courtesy of El Anatsui.

Born in 1944 in southeastern Ghana, sculptor El Anatsui has been transforming the everyday flotsam and jetsam of Nigeria, where the artist lives and teaches, into some of the most dazzling and original sculptures in contemporary art. Tending towards monumental installations, Anatsui’s work draws on traditional African textile and craft traditions to discuss the current issues pertaining to post-colonial Africa.

Finding inspiration in chance encounters with the trash and debris of everyday life, Anatsui allows the inherent qualities of his found materials to inform both the structure and formal content of his works. In Peak Project for instance, Anatsui created blankets out of the lids of condensed milk cans which he then folded into conical forms. Anatsui’s choice of form was inspired by the brand name of the condensed milk cans: “Peak”.

In Signatures, a 2005 installation at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, one can again see how El Anatsui creates new opportunities for expression by looking to what’s around him for inspiration. Using a number of logs left over from another artist’s sculpture, Anatsui stacked the logs into a large formation and painted the ends with colored stripes.

With such a focus on materials and inspiration, it is difficult to predict what direction El Anatsui will pursue next, but it is fascinating to look at how he reaches the artistic conclusions that he does. In an effort to highlight this aspect of his work, the Museum for African Art in New York teamed up with BRIC Contemporary Art to organize El Anatsui: Process and Project, an exhibition of drawings, photographs, sculptures and a video which span the artist’s career up to the present. As the title suggests, Process and Project offers a revealing peak into the unique vision and idiosyncratic method El Anatsui follows as he re-interprets the modern world thorough the refuse and debris of daily life. The exhibition is on view at BRIC Rotunda Gallery through May 2.

- Written by Joseph Buzzell

Links for more information:

• El Anatsui entry from the National Museum of African Art
• “A Thousand Bottles” 2009 NY times Article about El Anatsui
  
• Wikipedia entry

Jill Auckenthaler – Rotunda Artist of the Month

decompression #2, detail, watercolor and graphite on paper, 55 x 60 inches, 2007

worry and spin #1 (grid), detail, ink and cut paper collage, 18 x 17 x 7 inches, 2007.

Jill Auckenthaler is the Rotunda Artist of the Month. Auckenthaler is a Brooklyn-based artist who creates drawings, paintings, and paper sculpture.

Check out the full posting for more images and information on the BRIC Contemporary Art Artist of the Month page.