Alumni News
PROGRAM GRADUATES PRODUCE PUBLIC ART IN BIG WAYS!
DRIVEN BY ART
BrightMonk Enterprises presents its first event series, Driven By Art. Caitlin Bright '09, Beth Eisenstaedt '09 and Andy Monk have organized dynamic tours of public art sites around Manhattan. Compelling public art projects, which you may have overlooked in passing, are presented with interesting commentary, fun games, and delicious drinks as you are comfortably driven around Manhattan. The next Driven By Art tour will be on Sunday, January 17, 2010 and will showcase some of the best public art in SoHo and Lower Manhattan. Get ready for this unforgettable party bus experience where you can indulge in cocktails, friends, and the sights of Manhattan all while getting 'driven by art'. See you on the bus!
MAPPING DUMBO
Mapping DUMBO was a collaborative project curated by Katie Fox ‘09 and Haley Lowe ‘10 where three groups of New York-based artists created a series of artworks as part of the D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival on September 25-27, 2009. The resulting works were selected after the artists responded to a request for proposals from the curators calling for map-related, interactive artworks. Each work utilized mapping iconography in some form, and surprisingly, all three artists proposed using the temporal material of chalk in the execution of the works.
Palm Peaces (image top left) by Jenna Lynch and Eric Lima consisted of hundreds of small sculptures created as the artists pressed small balls of clay between their hands. Presented on the rocks in Empire Fulton Ferry State Park, visitors were invited by the artists to choose a sculpture to take home, then draw a white chalk circle on the rocks. Pixel Street by Golnar Adili, Emily Fischer, and Jen Harmon took the cobblestone streets of DUMBO as their canvas. The artists used brilliant blue chalk to draw pictograms directly on the street. Images included tobacco leaves in front of the Tobacco Warehouse and boxes in front of what was once a cardboard box factory. Kangarok X (image second from top left) by Mike Estabrook and Ernest Concepcion took form as a live drawing battle by the artists. After drawing a ficticious map on a wall inside 68 Jay Street bar, the artists used colored chalk to create a politically-charged mural utilizing their characteristic figures. More information.
NORTH BROOKLYN PUBLIC ART COALITION (NbPac)
VAA MA Program grads Katie Fox ’09, Ciara McKeown ’10 and Heather Pfister ’09 are members of North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition (NbPac). The mission of NbPac is to work with artists and the communities of Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick to produce art in public spaces. Formed in the spring of 2009 out of Council Member David Yassky’s office, NbPac’s kick off project was the “India Street Mural Project” (images lower left). Six artists were chosen to create a series of site-specific murals on India Street, celebrating Greenpoint’s rich history and the arts of North Brooklyn. NbPac’s recent project, Living Objects, is a public art installation by Jason Krugman featuring three LED-lit sculptures in McCarren Park, North Brooklyn’s largest park. Working with NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn (OSA), the illuminated figures are the largest public art installation in the park’s recent history. North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition is fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas, and was recently awarding its first grant by the Brooklyn Art Council for its upcoming project, Future Phenomena by Amanda Browder. More information.
PRICE CHECK
Price Check is an interactive curatorial examination of the variations of the visual art market based upon geographic proximity to a major art center. The exhibition focuses on the State of New York, where the art market ranges vastly from the urban art hub of New York City to the neighboring art town of Beacon or more distinctly, to the post-industrial city of Syracuse. In investigating how the price of artwork directly relates to the geographic location of its sale, Price Check asks artists, gallery owners and viewers to participate in the pricing of artwork. Designed as a traveling exhibition, Price Check has been displayed in Syracuse and Beacon, New York with an exhibition pending in New York City. The show features the work of eight artists representing a variety of mediums from a combination of these three locations of study. Price Check was curated by Roslyn Esperon '11 and Courtney Rile and sponsored in part through a New York University Steinhardt School Dean's Grant for Graduate Student Research. More information.
URBAN ART PROGRAM
Emily Colasacco '07, is Manager of Urban Art Program, organized under NYC's Department of Transportation (DOT) in the Division of Planning and Sustainability. Urban Art Program is an initiative to invigorate the City's streetscapes with engaging temporary art installations. As part of the World Class Street initiative, art will help foster more vibrant and attractive streets and offer the public new ways to experience New York City's streetscapes. Urban Art Program has three Program tracks: pARTNERS, which commissions new artwork for a DOT priority site or for a proposed site, Site to Site, which relocates existing artwork to a proposed site, and Arterventions, which presents short-term projects on a proposed site.
Charlotte Cohen, Adjunct Faculty member in the Visual Arts Administration MA Program, is part of the Advisory Group for Urban Art Program. The former director of NYC's Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program, Charlotte is currently Fine Arts Officer for the US General Services Administration where she manages both new art commissions at federal buildings as well as the fine arts collection in the New York region.