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  • Playing is where Genius is Born: AFP'22 Interdisciplinary LAB

  • 2 years ago
  • Barry Komitor addressing students at orientation. It is a great moment to witness the progress we’ve made over the last two years. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Art for Progress (AFP) transitioned its summer program to a virtual platform, as did most folks, institutions, and non-profit organizations at the time. But this year, our in-person comeback is even more solid as we offer an amazing assortment of workshops ranging from pattern-making to music theory, and New York’s young art enthusiasts are soaking it all in. Although we are running traditional-style workshops, the program is running slightly differently. AFP’s summer program starts every week off with open arts on Mondays. Open arts was devised as an interdisciplinary lab where every student is encouraged to float between workshops or work on specific skills requested by the student. The arrangement was conceived to assist students in taking on a more fluid approach in their practice and garner inspiration from one genre to the next. By providing them with an allowance of space and fluidity to experiment with mediums and engage in collaborative discussions with one another, all possibilities to spark the creative mind, commence exploration, and conceptualize innovative ideas begin. We want to motivate our children to play again. Playing is where genius is born.   Ayden and La Vie working on their collaborative preliminary sketch. During one of the music composition workshops led by Barry Komitor,[...]

  • Art for Progress Summer Music and Arts Program

  • 4 years ago
  • Event performance celebrating the end of the summer program (2019). Now in its third year, Art for Progress’ summer program gives students the opportunity to learn about life as a professional artist, while also learning new advanced skills to help them achieve their goals. Funded by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation with additional support from the Sansom Foundation, the program is taught by professional teaching artists with a long history of working with Art for Progress (AFP) in NYC’s Public Schools and other important projects. Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, the program will be funded through 2021, which gives AFP the opportunity to expand and grow the program even more.  Over the years, the program has invited Grammy nominated musicians, prominent visual artists and high-level fashion designers as its guest speakers. It has been a valuable and exciting part of the program for students and highly rewarding for the artists. There’s no cost for students to attend. Though the program for this summer will be hosted online, it will be one of the best yet, due in large part to Art for Progress’ newly developed  online learning platform:  https://learn.artforprogress.org, which was created to optimize the experience for both our teachers and students. The new website includes many valuable features which will enhance learning and promote better communication. This summer’s program is planned over four weekends beginning July 25th and ending [...]

  • A Woman Who Speaks, Sex. An Interview with Eurydice Kamvyselli

  • 6 years ago
  • by Beláxis Buil We met a few years back. Our meeting encounter happened during an exhibition Intersectionality, 2016 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, Florida. Eurydice Kamvyselli struck me as a woman who resists nonsense, but more so, foolishness from any opponent who questions her prerogative. But her confrontation is directed towards men (since it has been men creating most sex scandals), and rescuing our vaginas and womanhood, as an agency. Her ammunition deeply roots in communication and literature, with an array of published books on sexual identity, investigations on socio-sexual practices and the raging plague of sexual violation women face every day. In her first novel, F/32, she tells the story of a "woman's vagina abandoning her body as a stranger on the street is assaulting her." It is not to say Eurydice has a problem with sex, but more specifically, she reminds us of how women are silenced when faced with the woe of the patriarchs' contamination of its true meaning and intention. After all, sex should be an element of power for women in both public and private spaces, not a transactional feature as compromised in Western capitalism. Her practice as a writer, visual artist, speaker, and activist has given her a voice: one that aims to dismantle "the patriarchy that binds women to its words, laws, paradigms, and aesthetics." Since the #METOO movement, Eurydice grabbed the "bull by its horns" and commenced a new project: SpeakSex Podcas[...]

  • Art for Progress' Summer Arts Program 2019

  • 6 years ago
  • Art for Progress Summer Arts Program 2018 Art for Progress (AFP) is pleased to announce The Pierre & Tana Matisse Foundation has awarded the organization a three year grant in support of its Summer Arts Program. After a highly successful launch of the program in 2018, the foundation requested a multi year proposal to support the program which was recently granted in May. Art for Progress will receive $52,500 to fund the program through 2021. The program was developed with the purpose of providing instruction in both music and visual arts over the summer months for students and young adults who are interested in careers in art and music. Although the focus is to provide instruction, knowledge and insight for career oriented students, the program is open to anyone interested (ages 13-24). Some of the key objectives of the program include: providing a challenging curriculum while giving students the opportunity to choose and learn skills they desirepresenting professional, engaging artists to speak to attendees about the challenges of choosing a career in artssharing information and knowledge that's typically not offered in formal school programs such as "Key Tenets for the Professional Artist."providing teaching opportunities for students who are interested in education careers The workshops will take place on four consecutive Sundays beginning July 14th (July 21st, July 28th, August 4th) from 10:30am-4:30pm. There is no cost for students and lunch wil[...]

  • Contemporary Art in San Jose, Costa Rica: MADC (Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo

  • 6 years ago
  • Traveling opens one's eyes to truths that otherwise become lost to distance, suspicions, and misinformation. By traveling, we connect with cultures and find out about crippling circumstances that may impair individuals from being included in global communications in which they should participate. During a recent trip to Costa Rica, I found some surprising facts on the local view on art. First, I must disclose: aside from national institutions, there are hardly any galleries in the city of San Jose. Some of the residents claim an enormous problem with the few public works facing vandalism or individuals uncertain of art's purpose in a town, or even as a serious career. It is true that cultural institutions such as the National Museum of Costa Rica and the Jade Museum boast an extraordinary dose of Pre-Columbian art and jade artifacts. MADC ( Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo) exudes a lovely exterior and has gained the public interest of many traveling abroad because it is one of the only contemporary art spaces in the city. Upon entering the space, there were two modestly small galleries. The first had a few paintings wrapped in plastic. It seemed as though a transition of works was taking place. The second displayed smaller pieces lined up in a row or salon-style arrangements. Towards the back wall, a larger-scaled painting with jagged angles in vibrant blues textured, ragged greens, and crisp whites stood out as a lovely landscape. Perhaps, one of Cost[...]

  • A Candy-colored World of Side Effects

  • 6 years ago
  • Tina La Porta opens her first solo exhibition, Side Effects in South Florida on September 29th in the FAR Gallery at FATVillage Projects. The presentation is a candid oeuvre on La Porta's encounter with mental illness and her skilled approach to creating a pharmaceutical, candy-like frenzy to the viewer's eye and psyche. Far Gallery is a long corridor of two walls facing North and South to the main entrance, making the task for any curator or artist challenging to organize works within the space without it becoming predictable. Nonetheless, La Porta and curators Vee Carallo and Leah Brown strategized the area by assembling the wall sculptures in a non-linear format, concentrating on colors, geometric designs within the works and by the story of each prescription pill. Although La Porta is open about her way of life and how her functionality depends on the suppression her pills provide, she also comments in Indian Summer (2003) on the comfortable accessibility people have to order any prescription online. With its deceiving romantic shades of pink and old rose, Indian Summer 2003 exudes an ill feeling to a morning-after pill, direct from India without any proper instructions or what damaging side effects one is to expect from it. From La Porta's grueling process to crush each pill, comes the construction of a larger disk or shape resembling a small tablet filled with an array of smaller capsules sprinkled in vibrant colors and delicious enough to want to bite. The scu[...]

  • Jean-Michel Basquiat's Band, "Gray"

  • 7 years ago
  • Jean-Michel Basquiat was a well known plastic artist based in New York and sponsored by Andy Warhol. Music was very important in the life and work of this artist, and in 1979 he formed an experimental band with the artist and actor Vincent Gallo. They named the band "GRAY" as a tribute to the book of anatomy published by Henry Gray in 1950. The band arises in the middle of the punk explosion of New York, but especially to a more experimental branch known as No wave.  No wave has a very industrial sound where the electric guitar is used not as a musical instrument, but as a tool that generates noise. He was also interested in the frenetic and eclectic rhythms of the seventies and eighties, like the incipient rap of the hip hop movement. Basquiat played the clarinet and the synthesizer and the band frequented famous venues like CBGB where Blondie and The Ramones made their debut, the Mudd Club, etc. The music from "Gray" can be heard in several films including "Downtown 81," starring Basquiat, talking about his life as an artist in New York. Nerea T. Ruiz  

  • Generative Ballet. The Perfect Geometry of a Dancer

  • 7 years ago
  • Ballet Rotoscope is an experimental short film made in 2011 that connects ballet with technology. By empowering the natural beauty of ballet and utilizing physical computing, the concept adds value to the real-time action and performance. The artists and researchers involved in the project, have created a relationship between geometric shapes with an animation technique known as rotoscope which was invented in 1905 by Max Fleischer. The object’s contours are traced and controlled by an algorithm that brings a mathematical layer to the natural movements of a ballerina. The awesome result is the ballerina dances while she draws perfect geometry.  The joints on her body are traced with a computer –generated rotoscope animation technique created by mathematical methods. In the process, each of the steps of the ballerina were tracked with accuracy to translate and synthesize it with a vectorial animation. Rotoscope technique is normally used in motion pictures to make realistic cartoons, but artists use it to generate an abstract animation of shapes that follow the movements of a ballerina. Therefore, this project makes sense in how to bridge the gap between arts and technology and create new concepts of beauty. This great artwork was created in Keio University of Japan, and the proposal intends to be an interaction between live performance and animation and new ways of expression. This was developed by the EUPHRATES Group, founded by the students of[...]

  • Hundreds of Sparrows

  • 9 years ago
  • I came across Katy Grannan's photographs at Salon 94 after visiting the New Museum next door. While individually they remain striking portraits, albeit not vastly unique in the photographic spectrum, what makes her work important lies in her documentary approach to the sleepiness, strangeness, and pathos of Modesto, California. Also the setting of her upcoming documentary, The Nine, the pieces ranged from large-scale individual portraits, to landscapes, and video clips. The portraits are blazing in their preciseness and their size allows for the individuals to tower over the viewers, commanding the most space and attention in the room they are in. The men are shirtless, and the women sport outfits that look like they're from the 80's. A look of disillusionment permeates through their faces, however, and in the case of the women, it betrays the vibrancy of their clothing. What's really at the heart of Grannan's work is a commentary on the American class system - ripe in the media these days thanks to shows like Making a Murderer - and "the other side of the American Dream." Modesto was the location in The Grapes of Wrath and Dorothea Lange's photograph Migrant Mother, both gripping portrayals of The Great Depression's physical and emotional effects on the psyche and physicality. And essentially, Grannan's work from Modesto serves as the setting of our contemporary depression. And the photographs speak for themselves in this regard - the subjects are present but not f[...]

  • NYC Arts Non Profit Heads West in Support of Local Arts Programs

  • 9 years ago
  • NYC Arts Non Profit Heads West in Support of Local Arts Programs Convergence: Saturday, November 14th, Studio Maesto, Santa Monica, CA. On Saturday, November 14th New York City based non-profit Art for Progress (AFP) will host a fundraiser in support of Studio Maesto’s Arts Collective Program in Santa Monica, California.  The event will take place at Studio Maesto’s dance and photography studio at 1547 6th Street, Santa Monica, and will feature visual art from three Los Angeles based artists who have exhibited with AFP in the past- Sona Mirzaei, Lichiban and Pablo Damas. The night will also showcase live performances from Barry Komitor (NYC based band Bad Faces), DJ sets from NYC’s Gatto, LA based DJ/Producer Elliot DeHoyos and a myriad of local performance artists. Net proceeds from ticket sales and a percentage of art sales will go to support the studios arts collective program (details below). Tickets ($15) will be available at the door. Tickets include a drink and light fare. Additional beverages will be available for purchase. Studio Maesto, 1547 6th Street, Santa Monica, CA - Hours: 7:30pm – 11:00pm Over the last 12 years, Art for Progress has produced over 50 major events in NYC, Miami, San Francisco and Washington DC. With a focus on multimedia productions, AFP has garnered valuable press coverage for artists in world renowned publications such as The New York Times, Women’s Wear Daily and The Village Voice.  While supporting and promoting artists through these[...]

  • This Is Why Pianist Eva Novoa Loves Her Floral Infinity Scarf

  • 10 years ago
  • Barcelona-born Brooklynite, pianist Eva Novoa  has produced two cds, her debut Trio (with Masa Kamaguchi on bass and Marc Lohr on drums), and Quartet (with Ernesto Aurignac on alto saxophone, Masa Kamaguchi on bass and André Sumelius on drums), both released on the label Fresh Sound New Talent. Before moving to Brooklyn, she lived many years The Hague, Netherlands, studying, and eventually teaching at Koninklijk Conservatorium.   It was in Holland, that she not only learned Dutch curse words,  she also how to live in shitty weather: "It's much worse than New York. It may rain 6 days out of 7, she says while chatting in her kitchen, over espresso and Spanish shortbread cookies. "Wherever you go, you're soaked, shoes are dripping water." Find out about her beloved fashion accessories after the jump, and learn more about this gifted musician at EvaNovoa.com. Jacqueline Colette Prosper, @yummicoco   Floral Infinity Scarf I found this floral scarf on my way to work at a musical theatre in Holland. In a country where there's so much wind, and you're on your bike, your scarf eventually flies away. So you just do this [EVA MAKES A DOUBLE LOOP WITH THE CLOSED-LOOPED FABRIC], and you don't lose it. It's really warm! In Holland, you always have to wear a scarf. even in the summer. The weather sucks, and you have to wear something [warm], or else you'll get sick.    Vintage Little Black Dress From Grandma For the anniversary of the mus[...]