See the flickr slideshow!

See the video, “The Process,” on Vimeo!

“During our first session Krystal and Cassandra learned basic jewelry techniques like working with pliers, transferring a sketch to metal and then cutting it out using a saw. We’ll upload photos of the outcome of this first project in the upcoming weeks!”

View the full flickr slideshow!

- Posted by Rachelle Mozman, photography mentor

View a great collection of photos of this class, with descriptive captions by Exploring the Arts intern Dayalin, at our flickr page!

In Sage & Coombe's Tribeca office, students get ready to see a slideshow of past and present architecture. In the center of the table are small models of some Sage & Coombe buildings.

The first part of our lecture focused on how the form and function of architecture has changed throughout history, from the Egyptian pyramids to more modern developments like the High Line. We learned about how different styles of architecture address different climate conditions, as well as different lifestyles, and how the field has been influenced heavily by technology in recent years, as well as environmentalism. For a really detailed summary and images of Sage & Coombe’s  architecture history slide show, see the 2010 Art Ready blog post.

Julia shows a more contemporary, technologically-advanced building. It was designed with the assistance of computer programs.

Sun shades: a component of a sustainable ("green") building.

Julia and Andrew also showed many examples of Sage & Coombe’s work. Unlike some architecture offices, which specialize in specific types of buildings like hospitals, Sage & Coombe’s architects may find themselves working on a wide range of projects at any given time. These include renovations of existing buildings (including the past and current renovations of Smack Mellon!), public buildings like a fire station and comfort station in Staten Island, nonprofit spaces, and interior/exterior design projects. A lot of Sage & Coombe’s buildings incorporate creative design elements; for example, for the reading room of the New York Public Library’s Fort Washington branch, huge overhead lamps incorporate photos from the NYPL image archive. Julia explained, “For this interior design project, we had to figure out how to make the biggest impact in the space without actually changing the structure of the building.” Similar to graphic design, architecture is all about working with clients to solve problems like this one.

A Sage & Coombe interior design project: The reading room of the Ft. Washington NY Public Library branch

Plans for the Fort Washington Library

Julia and Andrew also talked about how architects’ “creative ideas actually get built.” While initial ideas can get sketched out using a mere pencil and paper, today most architects use computer drawing programs to lay out each detail of a building. They also create both 3-D scale models and digital renderings to show their clients what a completed project will look like. Once a project has been approved by the client and ready for construction, detailed drawing sets need to be made for the contractors.

Andrew and Julia pass around a drawing set

Needless to say, the complex, step-by-step work of actually seeing a project to fruition is usually stretched out over several months or even years, and  is a very collaborative process: “To be an architect, you have to be good at putting your creative ideas down on paper,” explained Andrew, “but you need to know how to manage other people. You also need to have business and marketing skills.” Architecture also intersects with many other disciplines, such as physics, environmental science, and graphic design. Because of this, people sometimes change careers into architecture from other fields. While Julia knew she wanted to be an architect since high school and did a 5-year program at Cooper Union, Andrew originally studied fine art and art history in college, worked in design for a few years, then got his 3-year masters degree in architecture.

The career path of an architect is not an easy one; in addition to all this schooling, you need to get your architecture license in order to supervise your own projects, sign drawings, and officially be considered an architect. Attaining this license involves a combination of both acquiring enough internship hours during your first few years of working, and taking seven different exams. Both Julia and Andrew admitted to not sleeping very much in architecture school; however, they described the excitement of seeing how different students would all approach the same assignment differently. Unlike most of the fine artists we have visited in Art Ready, architects who work for a firm like Sage & Coombe usually have just one full-time job in architecture, rather than taking on other work to support their art.

Students who work with Sage & Coombe for their mentorship will visit different architectural sites around the city. They will also get to design their own projects, such as buildings or community centers, based on their interests and experience levels.

While the career of an architect may not promise easy fame and fortune (Andrew explained that most architects do not become well-known or do huge projects until their 40s or 50s), it can be very rewarding.  “When I’m working on a building, it’s like my baby,” said Andrew. “I get to nurture it and watch it grow into something I’m proud of.”

For example, in many of Jessica’s videos, she or another actress tells one side of a story, while another person’s version is juxtaposed into the frame.  In the case of Parable#1: Katelyn and the Young Black Man, this takes the form of a male voice-over, and in the case of Parable #5: La Policia and the Unknown Language, Spanish subtitles (view excerpts of both on Jessica’s website).

In a recent street performance on the Lower East Side, “Two Lies and a Truth,” Jessica and two other actors told different stories and had random passersby guess which one of them was telling the truth. Jessica kept a tally of how often each actor was considered credible, and was surprised discover how often “people don’t believe people from their own culture,”  and how factors like a change in hairstyle and accent could influence whether or not the same person would be considered believable on different days.

Jessica talks about her work with the Art Ready group in her Lower Manhattan Cultural Council studio.

Jessica considers these types of projects examples of “socially engaged work,” and is passionate about “engaging directly” with communities outside art gallery walls, through projects like “Two Lies and a Truth.” In an earlier social project in 2007, Jessica had handed out free samples of “fat back,” an unhealthy type of lard used in cooking, on Harlem streets. On the back of each piece of meat were statistics about the rate of nutrition-related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes in Black and Latino communities.

Test prints from a recent photography project exploring the truth behind myths women tell themselves as they approach age 30. Jessica was choosing between different shades of grey for her final prints.

In addition to showing students samples of some of these videos as well as a recent photography project, Jessica also discussed how she supports herself as an artist. “I don’t get paid for my community work,” she explained, “so I have to strike a balance between that and producing some objects that people can collect and buy.” Jessica often re-edits still shots from her videos so they can be sold as entirely separate pieces. She also teaches photography and video in a variety of school and community settings to help support her art. She has a successful track record of winning grants and artist residencies to help fund the production of new work as well as make new professional connections–including the residency program at Smack Mellon, and her current studio at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

One of Jessica’s main pieces of advice for students was, “Don’t be afraid of rejection, or let rejection discourage you.” She explained how artists may need to apply to a dozen different residency programs to get accepted into just one of them. “If you keep putting your work out there, sooner or later, people will start to notice.” 

In Jessica's studio

Fortunately, there is an extremely detailed blog entry about the visit to Marci in fall 2010.

Marci and her two mentees from Spring 2011 also posted this awesome entry about one of their activities.

Please visit these posts to learn all about Marci and what you can do with her as a mentor!

Students in the Smack Mellon media lab view slides from Rachelle's "Exerbia" series exploring private suburban homes in New Jersey and Panama

To the question of access, Rachelle responded, “You just have to ask.” She says her mother is also a very good subject, willing to even travel with her to different Latin American countries to stage photographs in different houses.

Rachelle speaks to the Art Ready group in her studio.

In her Smack Mellon studio, Rachelle showed more of her pictures on display on the walls, as well as a newer video piece, A Mother’s Gaze, that explores, in Rachelle’s words, “how my mother would represent me if given a chance.” For this project, Rachelle asks her mother to draw her once a week, and videotapes the process.

Rachelle established an instant connection with some of the Art Ready students by revealing that she grew up in New York City and attended La Guardia High School, where some members of Art Ready go to school. In art school, she started out as a painter, but ultimately realized photography was a better way to “engage themes around family, class and gender divides.” Yet her process is very inventive. Lately, Rachelle always feels she needs to manipulate her photos in some way to get her message across.  She will explain that working with photoshop is a little bit like painting–to make something look convincing, you need to have a basic knowledge of perspective, shading, and color. Like many artists, Rachelle  also makes her living mostly as an art teacher in different programs serving youth and senior citizens.

As a mentor, Rachelle could teach her students new photoshop skills, as well as general photography skills like lighting. She also hopes to take students on field trips to photography shows.

Similarly to how they had reacted to Michael Paul Britto’s work several weeks before, several students expressed a sense of “discomfort” with Rachelle’s work, but “in a good way.” One person also said, “I really liked the techniques she used.”

Brandon, Dwight and Dayalin in Rachelle's studio

This was the opening question posed to Art Ready students by mentor Phill Shung of design and brand identity companies Sundree and Pixod. It led to a discussion of how Phill and his business partner, Mallie Mickens, have helped various clients develop and communicate their brand identities to target audiences. Past clients have ranged from celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Destiny’s Child, to nonprofits like the Brooklyn Historical Society and charitable causes like a Hurricane Katrina relief campaign.

Mallie (left) and Phill (right) address the group, in their Park Slope, Brooklyn office

Design and branding projects range from creating websites and smartphone apps, to “art direction” for magazine photo spreads and advertisements.  Phill described the process of art direction a little: “You take a concept or story that a client wants to tell, then translate it to a medium like photography or video. This usually involves directing an entire team–for example, for a celebrity photo shoot, you need a location scout to find the right settings to take the pictures, a makeup artist, a wardrobe person, etc.”

Phill holds up some of the magazines for which he has done art direction.

For any type of design project, it is also important to “get familiar with your client’s message before anything else.” Phill and Mallie often do a lot of outside research to make sure they fully understand a client’s product or service. They consider this one of the most interesting parts of their job, which has taken them on some unexpected paths. For example, one of their clients was trying to sell horse DNA, which led the company to research the science behind DNA. “In this business, you need to be constantly learning,” explained Mallie. “Each company has a problem, and you need to solve it creatively. You’re expected to be able to solve any problem thrown at you.”

Neither Phill nor Mallie had planned to be a designer early in his career (Phill had actually studied electrical engineering as an undergraduate at Hampton College, and Mallie went to trade school). Yet both of them had started doing freelance design projects for various clients, realized they could actually make a good living from their art, and eventually started their full-time businesses.

Phill’s mentees will get a basic education in the tools of design, including the adobe suite and html and css. They could build original websites or apps, or, like last year’s mentees, design an entire printed magazine. They will have the chance to meet other professionals on the field, and take field trips to visit other studios and to do photo shoots.

One of Phill and Mallie’s final messages to students was to take advantage of the internet and social media. “In this day and age when anyone can start a blog or post a viral video on youtube, YOU have as much ability to impact what people are thinking as a major TV network.”

One of the posters on display in the studio

However, while Sonya spends a lot of time in this studio developing sketches and templates for her installation pieces, much of the actual work gets created onsite at the galleries and alternative spaces where she builds massive architectural interventions out of fragile, usually ephemeral materials. These have ranged from tin foil to cardboard, but one of Sonya’s favorite materials is vellum, a paper commonly used by architects, since her work is so connected to architecture.

Some of the photos and sketches that inspire Sonya's work, on her studio wall

Sonya began her talk by showing slides of some of past  projects, which included a piece at Smack Mellon that reconstructed an old-fashioned boiler out of paper, a reference to the gallery’s former function as a heating and cooling plant. She also recently had a major solo show at Mixed Greens Gallery in May 2011, in which different sections of the gallery referenced various interior and exterior sections of a tenement building, all constructed out of materials like cardboard and paper.  Her work is inspired by  impermanence  as well as perceived danger in the urban environment (as she calls it, “urban anxieties”). By building structures normally perceived as sturdy out of fragile materials, Sonya references things like buildings or freeways being torn down and rebuilt, stalled real estate construction due to economic recession, and fatal accidents at construction sites.

Small pieces made of vellum, based on architectural details

Sonya described some of the challenges of creating this type of work: “Unlike a painter, I can’t obsess over the finished product for as long as I want in my studio, before bringing to a gallery.” Though a lot of planning takes place ahead of time, Sonya’s work must mostly built in the gallery on the spot, especially since its delicacy makes it very difficult to transport (students were curious to see how each part of her work can be packaged in its own custom-made box, for safe transport). This need to build onsite sometimes leads to intensive installation schedules with multiple sleepless days and nights spent finishing up a project. When asked what motivates her to keep going in such a situation, Sonya responded, “I believe if I am presenting my artwork to the public, it has to be really good. It’s usually the little details that go in at the end that really make the work successful.”

A vellum toilet left over from Sonya's "Tenement" exhibition at Mixed Greens. Also a demonstration of how the work is sometimes preserved and packed. Much of it is destroyed after a show is over, however.

Another challenge is that most of Sonya’s labor-intensive work must be destroyed after each show, if it hasn’t already fallen apart on its own by the end of an exhibition. For Sonya, wrecking artwork is a private and sometimes cathartic affair–another central theme behind all of her work that “everything ends.” However, since she is now represented by a commercial gallery, she has started preserving more small sections of her work, some of which have been purchased for people’s private homes.

In her small workspace area, students had a chance to see and touch some of the pieces that make up some of Sonya’s larger installations. She also demonstrated how she folds paper and creates templates for repeated architectural elements such as rungs of a ladder or fence. Though there are some repeating elements like these that she has learned to reproduce quickly, “which each new project, I have to teach myself how to make it and learn as I go,” Sonya said.

Students were very inspired by Sonya’s work, especially its overall message. Said one student:

“I thought using paper to create sculptures was unique….It’s ironic that she uses ephemeral materials to create structures that are generally supposed to be sturdy.”