Classes
Collage Class with Caris Reid
Come join us the first Tuesday of every month at 7:30 pm for a whimsical evening of collage. Each class will have a new theme to explore...ranging from Iconoclasts to Spirit Animals, with unique, carefully combed material to match. One week you might find gloved ladies from a 1950's German fashion ad, brazen youth from a 1970s Life magazine, or cloistered Victorian cabinet photos. Come listen to music, relax and let your imagination and scissors run free.
The Next Class Is June 4th, 7:30pm
Teacher Bio
Painter and writer Caris Reid is a Contributing Editor for the Arts and Culture publication “Dossier Journal”. She received her BFA from Boston University, and attended the “Takt Kunstprojektraum” residency in Berlin. In addition to showing her paintings internationally, she has curated the exhibitions, “Autosuggestion” (September, 2010) and “All That is Unseen” (February 2011) with co-curator Meg O’Rourke. She was recently a guest contributor for Paddle8, an online curatorial where she reflected upon the concept of the Female Gaze and Male Objectification, and curated an online grouping of images of other Female Artists. She regularly volunteers with an organization called “The Art of Elysium”, leading art workshops in the pediatric ward of New York hospitals. She is currently painting an intimate series of portraits of female dancers and performers based in Brooklyn and the Lower East side.
Sunday Painters with Jenna Gribbon
Haven't you always wanted to make a painting? Or maybe you already paint but wish it weren't always such a solitary endeavor? Come to Sunday Painters! You'll spend a lazy Sunday afternoon at the beautiful Oracle Club at our painting party! Come with something you'd like to paint; an image, an object, or an idea, and we'll work together to figure out how to make a painting that looks the way you've imagined. All skill levels (or lack of skill levels) welcome.
Last Sunday of every month 1pm-4pm
Single Class $35 (includes materials)
Teacher Bio
Jenna Gribbon is the proprietress of the Oracle Club.
She was born in Knoxville, TN and currently lives and works in Long Island City, NY. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art in New York, and at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles, and of numerous group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Some of these include shows at Babel Kunst in Trondheim, Norway; the Georgia Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta, GA; the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts in New York, NY; and the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland. In 2010 she was included in Realism-The Adventure of Reality a large-scale exhibition which traveled to two museums in Germany; first to Kunsthalle Emden in Emden, and subsequently to Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich. Gustave Courbet, Gerhard Richter, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia were among the other artists in the exhibition.
(Special Note: In addition to her experience as a practicing artist, Jenna has worked for Jeff Koons painting photorealist paintings, and was hired by Sofia Coppola to create replicas of 18th century portraits for her film Marie Antoinette, so she is uniquly equipped to help students technically master a range of techniques)
Beginning Adult Ballet with Carolyn Lockhart
Beginning Adult Ballet is designed for adults without any previous experience and also those who have past experience dancing and want to regain their knowledge/strength. The class is formatted to be an interactive, supportive atmosphere where there are lively discussions about the movements and ballet in general. We will explore the history of ballet not only through our movements but also through suggested readings, videos, and music. I place a strong emphasis on learning proper body placement, alignment, and technique through the traditional Vaganova method, however, while this is a strict regime when combined with discussion and a non-competitive environment, it will enable students to establish a foundation so that they are able to play with choreographic elements, musicality, and their artistic side.
Every Saturday at 2:00 pm
Teacher Bio
Carolyn Lockhart began seriously studying ballet with the Kirov Academy of Ballet. While at the Kirov Academy of Ballet Carolyn studied with renowned teachers Nikolai Morozov, Ludmilla Morkovina, Vladimir Djouloukhadze, and Yelena Vinogradova. Additionally she spent time studying at the Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and The Harid Conservatory. Some key roles danced by Carolyn were Lise in La Fille mal gardée, Frescoes in The Little Humpbacked Horse, and Pas de Trois in Swan Lake. Carolyn still dances and is currently choreographing a short one-person ballet.
In addition to dancing, Carolyn is actively involved in the fine arts world having worked at Printed Matter, Primary Information, and currently working at White Columns.
A Path to a Shared Cosmology With Steven Thompson
Email us and we'll send you this week's reading material!
Missing from our present condition is a shared cosmology. In the past, religion served this purpose. Later, confidence in the perfectibility of mankind gave us a romantic, even heroic encouragement. Today our closest approximation is the often outrageous claims of contemporary physics, cold comfort for our emotional lives.
In "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren said: "A diamond ain't a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot."
In the thinking of Mr. Thompson, art is less akin to the creation of diamonds and more like the attempt to obtain them.
Many artists have the relationship reversed and consider themselves like the dirt in Warren's quote: that is, to produce their own diamonds they must subject themselves to heat and pressure of learning and effort.
This class proposes that the diamonds are there in the mountains and we only need to determine where they are. Our work is to uncover them.
Consider that friendships, family, dreams and fears, our education and naiveté, essentially everything, forms something like an atmosphere. Like the weather, what we experience and express varies, is often unpredictable, is capable of beauty and disaster - but usually not to such dramatic degrees. Is it possible that each of us experiences creativity much in the same fashion? We are susceptible to every sort of irrationality and to each small, almost imperceptible influence, not just to our larger and conscious desires and intentions alone. We attract and repel like magnets. The stars align and misalign without our consent. All art arises in an environment, and the best art environmentalizes the shifting experience of the individual.
In this class we will read the works of authors and artists past and present and discuss them in open meetings. We will search for a shared environment. We will endeavor to find a cohering process in Art and in this way uncover our cosmology. Some of the authors and artists we will discuss are Giordano Bruno, Andrei Tarkovsky, Giambattista Vico, John Cage, and Natalia Ginzberg, among others.
Through these remarkable artists we will slowly discover the pathways to our own valuable ideas and determine a methodology as to how these might shared.
Thursday evenings 7:30 pm
Single Class $10
Teacher Bio
Steven Thompson was born in South Carolina in 1967 and now resides in Brooklyn, NY.
He received undergraduate degrees in Literature, Classical Languages, and Art from the College of Charleston in SC, an MFA in painting and drawing at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, and an MFA in mixed media and sculpture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Steven taught academic and studio courses at the University of Georgia for 6 years and a graduate course at The New School, Parsons in New York in 2009.
His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions including at Rove, London, and most recently at Kate Werble Gallery in NY.
