Drawing Basics with Margery

Gesture of a pear

What makes that apple look so good? The color? Sure, but perhaps the shape—the gesture. Learn to translate that fruitful taste into a drawing filled with weighted, curved, and hatched lines. And don’t worry if you don’t know what hatched or cross-hatched lines are, Drawing Basics with Margery Theroux will teach you.

The Art School at Old Church, in Demarest, is a community hub for students of all ages to learn and to flourish in all different mediums from painting to ceramics to photography.  The school offers over 90 classes that take place in the morning, afternoon, night and weekends for a period of 10 weeks. We provide workshops on the weekends in glass bead making and figure drawing, and if you’re feeling mindful, take a weekly yoga class on Thursday mornings!

Whether you are new to drawing or in need of a refresher, you won’t be lost in this class!

With different still life set up weekly, Margery begins class with handouts and demonstrations of different drawing skills. With encouraging words of advice, she shows you step-by-step how to contour or shade the objects she set up in the middle of the room (last week, it was a selection of fruit). She dictates what she sees as she demonstrates: "A luscious apple with high shoulders and a narrow bottom or a pear with a bent body."

Stippling of an apple

The three-hour class will fly by as Margery provides individual attention. Going from stippling to shading, after a while, you might even get lost in the moment and forget that you’re drawing a piece of fruit. Before you know it, you will have learned the basics and can practice anywhere with anything. 

So, bite in! Start with a delicious apple then work your way toward an entire fruit basket, and graduate to figures.

Registration is now open and Fall courses begin on September 6. Come join and register for a class today by mail, fax, hand delivery or over the phone.  Call 201-767-7160 for a printed catalog or visit www.tasoc.org. 

About The Art School at Old Church

The Art School at Old Church is a non-profit cultural resource center providing community access to enriching experiences in the arts.  The school offers over 90 art classes and workshops for adults, teens and children each semester, as well as free gallery art exhibitions, cultural events, and outreach programs for special populations.  The Art School’s programs are made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as contributions from foundations, corporations, businesses and individuals.

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Duets: Karen Snyder-Kadish and Seung Lan Whang

Karen Snyder-Kadish
Large Dragonfly Mug

The Café Gallery at the Art School at Old Church is pleased to present Duets: Karen Snyder-Kadish & Sueng Lan Whang. This is an exhibition of local artists displaying their most recent work in painting and pottery. Both Karen and Seung are members of the Art School at Old Church community and have come together for a show highlighting their progress as students and artists. Duets: Karen Snyder-Kadish and Seung Lan Whang will be on view in the Café Gallery through April 12^th.

Karen Snyder-Kadish
Pat the Bunny

Karen Snyder-Kadish (NORWOOD, NJ) is a full time artist specializing in pottery. Snyder-Kadish studied painting and ceramics at the California College of Arts and Craft, Parsons and the Art School at Old Church. Much of her works are functional pieces full of whimsy and color. Her work is influenced by her love of nature and animals. She is currently teaching art classes to survivors of domestic violence at The Center For Hope and Safety. Karen is also the proud owner of Pit Bull Pottery, where proceeds from her sales are donated to animal rescue facilities. Her work has been shown at the Rockland Center for The Arts, The Art School at Old Church and the Norwood Public Library.

Seung Lan Whang
Seashells

Seung Lan Whang
Fisherman's House

Seung Lan Whang (CLIFFSIDE PARK, NJ) is an amateur artist from Korea. Whang has always had a strong interest in art making but has only been able to receive training in the last few years to develop her talent. She has been a member at the Art School at Old Church for five years. The work displayed in the exhibit is a series of painting that have been made in class under the teaching of Ursula Schneider. Seung’s paintings express harmony by simplifying the forms of the subject matters as well as the color combinations.

Duets: Karen Snyder-Kadish and Seung Lan Whang will be on view from March 23 to April 12 in the Café Gallery at the Art School at Old Church. 

ANIMALIA

March 18 – April 14, 2016

Curatorial statement:

The current exhibition in the Mikhail Zakin Gallery explores the role of subject matter in contemporary art. In 2014, the exhibition Lay of the Land explored landscape as subject. In Animalia, the Mikhail Zakin Gallery exhibits work by five contemporary artists that explore animals as a subject while expressing more elusive elements of our own human nature. Works on view in this exhibition evoke literal and metaphorical meaning by elucidating animal nature and bringing us closer to our own.

“Animalia” is a made-up word to describe the human impulse to represent animals in art. In the
graphic poster by The Beehive Design Collective, centuries of history are distilled into a single image that depicts indigenous species of animals and insects to portray the struggle for land rights in Mesoamerica. In mixed media paintings by Jane Dell, animals appear as if in a vision to tell a chaotic, expressive story. The dreamlike quality is evoked through watery application of pigment to Mylar.

Steel horse sculptures by Adrian Landon, including the life-size horse sculpture in welded steel on the front lawn of the Art School, recognize horses for their contribution to human culture and civilization. At the same time, their strength is far beyond human, and we are met with wonder at how humans ever managed to harness the power of these powerful creatures. In realistic oil paintings by Sarah Smith, animals are depicted in a space that is their own. In her animal portraits there is no space for a human to interact with animals depicted head on. Encaustic paintings by Kristen T. Woodward describe instances where animals illuminate myths and stories that have become part of our consciousness. The rich pigments suspended in wax create a depth to the picture plane like a portal to a world where animals reign.

Works in this show present a variety of encounters with animals. They are at times distant or close, fierce or calm, at peace or threatened. What each representation of an animal has in common in this show is that each is in a context where they are uncontrived and uncontrolled. Can we encounter successful works of animal imagery such as these without experiencing that strange alienation that divides us from the “human” and brings us closer to something more profound? The works in this show carefully construct an animal plane of existence that is unspeakably alive.

-         Mary Gagler, Curator

Along The Line

The Café Gallery at the Art School at Old Church is pleased to have presented Along The Line, a duet exhibition that showcased work from local artists Karen Stern and Sarah Camille Wilson. Their most recent work in pottery was on display. Both Karen and Sarah are members of the Art School at Old Church community and have come together for an exhibition that highlights both the sculptural form and functionality in pottery. Along The Line was on view at the Café Gallery from July 9th through August 4th.

Face cup, Karen Stern

Karen Stern (ENGLEWOOD, NJ) is a part-time potter and a full-time clay enthusiast under the alias Dangerous Pottery. Stern has been making and collecting pottery for 10 years. Focusing on functional ceramics, Karen incorporates line work and form to create delicate details and handsome pottery.  She works from her home studio and in the ceramics studio at the Art School at Old Church, one of the few local art schools to offer pottery. She has also studied at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, NC. Her pottery has been exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Today, her work can be seen at Market House in Westwood, NJ, The Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, NJ, and at local craft shows and farmers markets in Bergen County. To see more of Karen's work, check out her Facebook page Dangerous Pottery . 

Vase, Sarah Camille Wilson

Sarah Camille Wilson (TEANECK, NJ) holds a BFA in ceramics from Maine College of Art and an MFA in ceramics from Syracuse University. Wilson teaches ceramics at the 92nd Street Y, Brick House Ceramic Art Center, and at the Art School at Old Church. While working in both sculptural and functional form, Wilson seeks a balance between beauty and ugliness in her work. She spotlights the textures and surfaces of the materials as they play an important role in each final piece.  She was the 2014 Teaching Artist in Residence at Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, India. She has been an artist in residence at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, where she was the recipient of the Kiln God Fellowship, and at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China. View Sarah's website for more information about her pottery www.sarahcamillewilson.com.

Sarah Camille Wilson

Sarah Camille Wilson

Karen Stern 

The Café Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 9:00 AM-5:30 PM, please call for evening and weekend hours. 

Cafe Gallery: Winter Workshop Sampler

Denise Kadar (pottery), Stephanie Maddelena (beads)

Stephanie Maddelena

Each winter, The Art School at Old Church offers a variety of workshops taught by visiting artists and faculty.  These workshops provide one or two day instruction ranging in different art mediums. Samples of work for several of the workshops can be viewed in a new exhibition in the Café Gallery through March 20^th. The workshop sampler exhibition included work in collage, pastels, cane/reed handled ceramics, and flame worked glass beads. With a selection of student work and the instructors own art, the exhibition encourages students to see work that will be made in each workshop.

This exhibition includes work by the Art School’s talented instructors and students; Marcy Cagan (collage), Denise Kadar (ceramics), Stephanie Maddalena (flame worked beads), and Karen O’Neil (pastels).

The Art School is pleased to present these opportunities for artistic growth in new materials. Come by The Art School to view the winter workshop samplers and make sure to register for one of the exciting winter workshops.  A description of each workshop offered can be found in the schools catalog and website at www.tasoc.org.

Marcy Cagan (left & middle), Karen O'Neil (right)

Art School student featured in The Journey, the Kennedy Center’s 2014 VSA Emerging Young Artists Exhibition

(WASHINGTON, D.C.)— Art School at Old Church student Andrew Weatherly was selected by VSA, a Jean Kennedy Smith Arts and Disability program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as a winner of the 2014 VSA Emerging Young Artists Program.

The program is designed to give visibility and a voice to the work of young artists with disabilities, ages 16 to 25, by exhibiting their work throughout the United States and around the world, cementing their work in the broader context of the history, art, and culture of the American, as well as global, experience. The 15 winners of this year’s competition receive cash prizes totaling $60,000. Of even greater value, they are brought, all expenses paid, to Washington, D.C. to explore the skills needed for a professional life in the visual arts, preparing them to competitively pursue arts-based vocations, whether as full-time visual artists or in a range of other professional capacities employing their creative talents. During this time, artists will meet with highly regarded professionals in the visual arts field and visit museums and galleries around D.C.

Andrew Weatherly
Winter Worlds, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 11" x 9"

Closter, NJ resident Andrew Weatherly, a student at the Art School at Old Church, has been selected as a winner of the 2014 VSA Emerging Young Artists Program for his artwork, Winter Worlds. As a winner, Andrew will receive an award of excellence accompanied by a cash prize of $2,000. Andrew is a student in a special mentorship program taught by Holly Ciccoricco on Friday afternoons. Holly Ciccoricco teaches the class three times per month to two special needs students from the Demarest area. Holly has taught children's art classes at the school for 14 years including a class for special needs students on Saturday mornings. Gail Rutigliano, a Demarest resident and active student at the Art School, assists Holly with the special workshop program.

The 15 winners were selected by a jury of noted art professionals, including William Newman, the Carolyn S. Alper Professor of Contemporary Arts at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, Brandon Brame Fortune, Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery, and Sarah Tanguy, curator in the ART in Embassies Program, a program of the U.S. Department of State.

“We are delighted to recognize this inspiring group of talented young artists living with disabilities,” said Betty Siegel, Director of VSA and Accessibility at the Kennedy Center. “This program highlights the contributions that young artists living with disabilities make to American society and culture and we commend Volkswagen Group of America for making it possible.”

The Journey will be on public display from September 15, 2014 to January 5, 2015 at the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution, 1100 Jefferson Drive SW, Washington, DC. The exhibition will be open daily 10:00am to 5:30pm and is accessible by Metro. The exhibition is free, no tickets are required. Following the close of the exhibition at the Smithsonian, The Journey will embark on a national tour to museums and galleries across the country. Volkswagen Group of America will host the first leg of this tour, displaying the entire exhibition at its headquarters in Herndon, VA. For information on the where The Journey is touring, please go to: http://www.kennedy-center.org/emergingyoungartists

VSA's signature programs offer multi-faceted, unparalleled opportunities for youth, with disabilities, who have aspirations in the performing and visual arts. Explore VSA programs at: www.kennedy-center.org/education/vsa/programs/

Beware of the Year 7000

Art School faculty member and figurative sculpture guru Janice Mauro has embarked on an incredible journey into the future. Beginning in 2009, Janice and collaborator Joanne Pagano Weber began exploring the artifacts uncovered at the site of a future archaeological dig. This month, the ongoing project will be visible to those of us dwelling in 2014 at exhibitions across two Connecticut galleries.

Read more about this project including the artists' statement from bewareoftheyear7000.com:

"Janice Mauro and collaborator Joanne Pagano Weber present “Beware of the Year 7000,” a mixed media installation which expands upon “The Tidal Decade,” hosted by Silvermines’s Director’s Choice to delighted audiences in 2009. Art 101 Gallery held a coordinating exhibit in Brooklyn and visitors were encouraged to “make the pilgrimage.” 

The ever-growing urgency of the ramifications of global warming and corporate greed, along with the evident loss of one’s humanity, provoke our ongoing collaboration. The work will comprise mixed media: sculpture, painting, voice, and text. 

The meaning of sculptures of an evolving robotic race is revealed through a series of letters by two fictional artists, along with their paintings. The correspondence, which thematically explores the human condition circa the year 7000 is a lifeline for the artists, who describe a horrific period of future history where humanity repeats its tragic exploitation of the living planet. The content of the sculpture and the painting in this show is nothing less than the loss of the human soul and the fight to preserve it.

Our ongoing work reopens an uncomfortable wound for examination and presents a fresh way to bring all-important humor and self criticism to the table. We have seen the positive results of engaging audiences by resonating the content of our art with their lives, allowing them to discover the narrative as they move through the show. The use of found objects to create futuristic sculptures, gadgets, and paintings reflects and subverts today’s obsession with technology through comedic social criticism.

The project is inherently educational as a wake-up call and a speculative journey into the unknown. As we consciously experience a monumental shift in our planet’s evolution due to climate change, City Lights Gallery and Trailer Box Gallery presents Beware of the Year 7000, where installation artists Janice Mauro and Joanne Pagano Weber ask the question, if corporations are people, too, what if they lose their humanity? Art lovers, thinkers, prophets, or gamers, look no further."

City Lights Gallery, Bridgeport, CT opening reception 5:30-8:30PM, 9/25, on view through 10/23/14
Trailer Box Gallery, Danbury, CT opening reception 5:00-8:00PM 9/27, on view through 11/1/14

"It’s the second melting of the polar icecap. The power of the few dictate the blueprint of a resurgent planet depleted once again. All resources are up for grabs as the human race divides along biological / robotic fault lines. While multitudes transition becoming semi-human mechanisms under the control of an artificial brain, two artists continue their work in hiding, corresponding by the only thing they have left – their creativity."

Draw Yourself In: 2014

August 4 - August 23, 2014

Over the summer, the Mikhail Zakin Gallery hosted a collaborative drawing project that invited the community to draw on the gallery walls... On mural-sized paper, that is. The theme of the project was portraiture, and we invited artists young and old to add a portrait and "draw themselves in" to this community project.

The project took place over the course of the two-week BLAST! of art program for kids. We received many enthusiastic contributions from the young artists enrolled in these summer classes. Below is the description of the project that was posted on the wall:

"Portraits: A portrait is a painted, drawn, photographic, or sculptural representation of a person. The key is to define the likeness, personality and mood of the person. We challenge you to draw a portrait of yourself, your mom or dad, maybe even make a new friend and draw their portrait. Draw just thier face or draw them in a scene. Give them crazy hair and colorful clothes.You are the artist, so be as imaginative and creative as you would like. Use these famous portraits as guides for your own work. But most importantly, have fun!"

 

Thank you for all the wonderful contributions!

25th Annual NJ Small Works Show

This year, the Mikhail Zakin Gallery at the Art School at Old Church is celebrating the 25^th Annual New Jersey Small Works Show with 61 works by 47 artists whose lives are connected in some way to the state of New Jersey.  The exhibition runs through June 6, 2014. The show is wheelchair accessible and free to the public.

This year's juror is Wes Sherman, Exhibition Chair at the Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster, NJ. Sherman is a professor of art at many New Jersey universities and an accomplished painter who received an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

Artists from all over NJ are invited to submit their work and take part in the open competition. Wes Sherman juried the show based on the individual merits of each work of art. The artist’s identity is not known at the time the selections are made. The single criteria for submitting work to this juried show is to have an autobiographical connection of some kind to the state of New Jersey. Submissions are received from Jersey ex-pats in places as far afield as Texas and California as well as from North, South and Central Jersey. The show becomes an artistic portrait of New Jersey by some of the many creative individuals who have called it home.

The only limitation for the artists is that the work cannot exceed eighteen inches in any direction.  With size as the only restriction, the diversity and range of artwork becomes an exciting feature of the show. Works include photography, ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, painting, papermaking and collage. Functional and decorative works in clay, fiber and mixed media represent a range of treatments of familiar materials.  Sculptural pieces achieve a kind of moodiness and grace that brings ceramics to a new level. Works in the show from the vast field of photography are printed in traditional black, white and color, digitally manipulated and printed using alternative processes. Paintings and drawings depict scenes from backyards, world travels and great imaginations. The juror selected works that shared an edgy quality, while taking care to present a range of styles and techniques. The selections make for a well-rounded exhibition of works representing a range of artists living and working in NJ.

In some respects the show reflects the immediate surroundings of the exhibition, with several artists included who are also students of the Art School at Old Church that houses the Mikhail Zakin Gallery.  The Art School offers over 90 classes each semester in many artistic disciplines, encouraging and challenging its students to tackle new techniques, practices and concepts, through cross-discipline explorations in art.

Helen Marie Farrant, Alpaca, stoneware, 1x3x5.5"