Sample work from Teen Art Show at Starting Artists, Inc.
From November 12-December 31, 2009, Brooklyn Utopias? held a corresponding teen art show at Starting Artists, Inc., open to all Brooklyn middle-high school students. Starting Artists (SA) is a 510(c)3 nonprofit organization located in Cobble Hill. SA benefits under-served middle and high school youth through hands-on training in the arts and entrepreneurship. SA’s free after-school classes in media arts and business prepare and inspire teenagers to create arts-based enterprises.
In October 2009, through workshops at SA with professional artists from the Brooklyn Utopias? group shows, students “got to work” re-envisioning Brooklyn.
Curator Katherine Gressel led a tour and scavenger hunt of the Brooklyn Historical Society exhibition. Triada Samaras and Susan Konvit led students in discussing art as activism and decorating respiratory masks protesting pollution on the Gowanus Canal. With artist Jess Levey, students photographed images of what they would like to see in their neighborhoods, projected onto their own bodies. Adam Taye taught students how to use old-fashioned typewriters to re-caption New Yorker cartoons and relate their own thoughts about Brooklyn to appropriated imagery. These artist-initiated projects inspired other students to tackle such topics as “green building” and recycling, the influence of big box stores on local communities, and the branding and commodification of Brooklyn artists. From printing out buttons with artsy Brooklyn slogans to photoshopping poems and plants onto Brooklyn cityscapes to sending simulated messages in bottles down the Gowanus’s murky waters, the “Starting Artists” in this show engaged critical issues facing their communities.
Please also view the above link to Teen Show at Starting Artists for more images of the opening and workshops at SA!
In October 2009, through workshops at SA with professional artists from the Brooklyn Utopias? group shows, students “got to work” re-envisioning Brooklyn.
Curator Katherine Gressel led a tour and scavenger hunt of the Brooklyn Historical Society exhibition. Triada Samaras and Susan Konvit led students in discussing art as activism and decorating respiratory masks protesting pollution on the Gowanus Canal. With artist Jess Levey, students photographed images of what they would like to see in their neighborhoods, projected onto their own bodies. Adam Taye taught students how to use old-fashioned typewriters to re-caption New Yorker cartoons and relate their own thoughts about Brooklyn to appropriated imagery. These artist-initiated projects inspired other students to tackle such topics as “green building” and recycling, the influence of big box stores on local communities, and the branding and commodification of Brooklyn artists. From printing out buttons with artsy Brooklyn slogans to photoshopping poems and plants onto Brooklyn cityscapes to sending simulated messages in bottles down the Gowanus’s murky waters, the “Starting Artists” in this show engaged critical issues facing their communities.
Please also view the above link to Teen Show at Starting Artists for more images of the opening and workshops at SA!
