The Art Students League…Finally

After attending last year’s Affordable Art Fair where The Art Students League had a booth, and after hearing about the generations of New York artists who’ve been members at “The League”, and after lots of talk and no action, I finnnnnalllllly pulled the trigger and signed up for the Drawing with Color art class twice a week.

To refresh your memory, The Art Students League is a studio style art school where classes are continually held throughout the year and students pay monthly. You merely come into class once you’ve started paying, rather than having a formal beginning to a class or semester structure. I believe the summer may be its own session but otherwise, we keep rolling.

The teacher is not present every class so students work independently. There are also additional weekly studio hours that students can attend to draw or paint from models.

The first day, admittedly, was kind of weird. It wasn’t the day the teacher was there and a lot of people were clearly continuing on their own independent projects. I did some sketches for the 2017 Spring Collection but without any other guidance and not my full panoply of supplies, I ducked out a bit early.

Yesterday the teacher was there and I also brought a lot more paints, canvases and such to work with. Again, it was basically independent study with everyone working on whatever they had brought. The teacher was outgoing and walked around giving advice and opinions on the work.

Definitely not your typical art class but I can see I’m going to get a lot of work done and I appreciate his insights and feedback.

Fun stuff!

West Elm Pop Up Shop

I feel like I've already been shouting it from the rooftops, but I'm just going to go ahead and drop this into a blog post too:

I'm having a Pop-Up Shop this weekend (Sat & Sun, Sept 17 & 18, 12-4pm) inside the West Elm on Broadway and W. 61st St in NYC!!!

West Elm is a national furniture and home decor store. They have a really cool initiative to promote local artists and makers through pop-up store-within-a-store events as well as carrying locally-made goods.

And what's truly amazing is that they donate the space and don't take a cut of any sales at the pop-up event. It's really incredible!

As you can tell, I'm super excited (and somewhat nervous). Please come by and say hi! I'll have some new, not-yet-on-the-website original paintings, as well as some reasonably priced prints.

Sat Sep 17, 12-4pm & Sun Sep 18, 12-4pm

West Elm: 1870 Broadway (at 61st St.), 2nd Floor

Pop Up Gallery Show in Tribeca

Last Thursday I was thrilled to be included in the Conception Events Contemporary Art Show at the MI-5 Lounge in Tribeca. Conception Events is a pop up art gallery that features emerging artists. They actually found me on Instagram and said I should consider applying for the show, so I did.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the event, other than there would be about 25 artists, each with a 4ft by 5ft space to show as many pieces as you'd like within that constraint.

I'd done a little bit of stalking of my fellow artists ahead of time and I thought some of their work was great, and others just weren't my taste. I was excited for the opportunity to show my work in person to friends, family and strangers, but I was also nervous that maybe my art wouldn't fit in with the rest of the vibe.

I chose 5 new paintings to show that were all based on memories of Caribbean vacations we used to take as an extended family growing up. We tended to steer clear of resorts and instead stayed at small hotels or rented condos. We've visited larger islands like Grand Cayman, Jamaica and Aruba, but we also vacationed at less touristy islands (or at least that seemed remote in the late 80s early 90s) like Carriacou, Little Cayman, Grand Turk, Nevis and Dominica...I can't say what these places are like now, maybe they're swarming with tourists. But back then, they always seemed pretty quiet.

We would spend our days playing in the ocean, hiking, exploring the local markets, SCUBA diving and building ball rolls in the sand...not sure if anyone else knows what a ball roll is or if our cousins just made that up....but essentially it's like a sandcastle but where you create a path for a racquetball ball to roll down and around and over bridges and through tunnels all made of sand.

As evening closed in, we'd read, play cards, shower and eat dinner, hopefully followed by a Snickers or Mars bar bought at a roadside stand.

With these paintings, I'm working to evoke the feelings of tranquility, peacefulness and joy I felt on those family vacations, where we didn't have any cares, except maybe finishing the winter reading list assigned by school. 

I showed three small acrylics on board, each 8x10 inches:

7 Mile Beach Grand Cayman

Soft Sunset Grenada

Lush Waters Carriacou

I showed one medium-sized acrylic on canvas, 22x28 inches:

Afternoon Rain Montego Bay

And lastly, one large 36x48 acrylic on canvas:

Dominica Rainforest

The show ended up being tiring but fun. I was so grateful to the TWENTY friends and family that showed up to support me. That was incredible! THANK YOU!