New Urban Arts

New Urban Arts presents another new publication!!

2012-01-11T12:57:00.000-05:00

“Encounter” is a program resource guide based on New Urban Arts’ Summer 2010 Art Inquiry with artist mentors Jane Androski and Alice Costas as well as artist/scholar in residence Laurencia Strauss.

The 86 page paperback book (7.44" x 9.68") with saddle-stitch binding and full-color interior ink costs $22.70. To purchase a copy of the book, visit our Lulu store here. The resource guide can be downloaded as a pdf at no cost.

This publication is one of a series produced annually. The program model reflects research from the National Summer Learning Association, which describes that the most effective summer learning environments allow students “freedom to digress from a prescribed curriculum” through project based learning and encourages sustained in-depth exploration of one theme.

We hope you find this resource guide useful in sparking new ideas for your own creative practice, individually, collaboratively or even in the classroom. The publication’s format allows readers to adapt, combine or alter the activities to your liking to best meet the needs of your specific environment.

Loud, outspoken, amazing and myself.

2011-12-31T12:02:00.008-05:00

A House Is Not a Home by Legend

I believe what's unique about New Urban Arts is that it gives young people a sense of empowerment; that they are truly capable to creatively think and problem solve.

-Karen, artist mentor

Love by Dakota

The kids blossom here because they aren't censored and can express themselves in ways they might not be able to at home and definitely not at school.

-Dailen, studio assistant and alum

Chandelier, Noel

I want to be loud, outspoken, I want to be amazing, and I want to be myself.

-Noel, high school senior

Math and my creative practice

2011-12-30T11:35:00.002-05:00

In 2009, I was one of the first math and science Studio Study Buddies at New Urban Arts.

At first, it was hard to find my place in an art studio. But New Urban Arts helped me to see that the math I'd been doing for fun was actually part of my "life-long creative practice." In third grade, I invented "Fibbly," a set of rules that generates short sequences of numbers. Over the years, I'd made drawings and music based on those sequences. The staff here encouraged me to show it in the Fall 2009 mentor exhibition:

A screen shot of Fibbly

Talking with students at New Urban Arts about the project helped me see Fibbly's potential as a teaching tool. Two years later, I shared it again at an elementary school in Maine. Seeing a classroom full of fourth-graders excited about math was an incredible feeling.

I owe that experience to New Urban Arts. As a former mentor, you know firsthand how special this place is, both for the students and for us adults. This year, I'm making a personal gift to New Urban Arts' annual campaign and I hope you'll join me.

Thank you. I'm proud to be part of a community of talented and passionate people (you!) who are working to empower youth and improve our world.

My classroom

2011-12-30T11:24:00.002-05:00

I'm Paul Tavarez and I was a student at New Urban Arts. I've made a personal donation this year and I'm asking you to help keep New Urban Arts open.

Growing up, I wanted to be a teacher. Maybe like you, I was used to classrooms where students sat in rows looking at teachers for all the answers. As a Dominican boy growing up in inner-city Providence, I thought that's the way things were.

But New Urban Arts introduced me to the radical possibility of creativity in my education. I signed up for everything, eventually settling on photography and poetry. The artist mentors here changed my self-image. They helped me see that what mattered wasn't my natural ability, but the effort I put in and the risks I was willing to take.

Now I'm a senior at Grinnell, a college I never dreamed I could afford. I've come back and mentored young men in New Urban Arts' summer program.

And I still want to be a teacher. But instead of my students looking at me for all the answers, New Urban Arts has inspired me to imagine a different classroom.

Please join me in donating to New Urban Arts' annual campaign. We can't do this without you. I'm a college student on scholarship aid, I don't have a lot of money. But I give what I can because I know it matters.

And I hope you will too.

Sincerely,

Paul Tavarez

What life is about

2011-12-30T11:17:00.003-05:00

My name is James, I used be known by Ashley and I'm a 2009 New Urban Arts alumnus. I'm writing to ask you to support a place that's made a big difference in my life.

I went through most of high school thinking I was unusual. I was shy and awkward. But as soon I as I walked into New Urban Arts I knew it was the space and the community I wanted to grow in. I joined two writing mentoring groups. The next year, I dove headfirst into photography and learned that I was actually pretty good at it.

My piece in New Urban Arts 2009 summer program

New Urban Arts was the place I truly found myself.

Most importantly, I took away things here that school couldn't teach me: like how to make friends with someone completely different than you, how never to give up on something even if all the doors are locked (because you can always build a new one), and how to build a fort to fit at least ten people in. I learned that sometimes, it's okay not to know what's going to happen, because finding out is really what life is about.

Now I'm a junior at Guilford College triple majoring in political science, gender studies, and philosophy with a minor in photography. I've spent my summers here at New Urban Arts as an intern, mentor and volunteer. I want to help more young people have the same opportunities I've had.

Growing up here in Providence, I know firsthand how hard it can be for young people. How few inspiring places there are for youth.

You can support New Urban Arts and make a real difference.

We need your support. Every gift, big or small, keeps our doors open. I hope you'll join me in supporting New Urban Arts' annual campaign before the year ends.

a. James Escobedo
New Urban Arts graduate, 2009

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-21T17:52:00.004-05:00

New Publication Available!

2011-12-20T16:51:00.004-05:00

New Urban Arts has published a new resource guide for educators, artists and young people that details curriculum from a thematic based summer arts program for high school students. The annual Summer Art Inquiry at New Urban Arts invites scholars, artists and high school students to spend July and August collectively exploring a common theme from a multi-disciplinary standpoint including research, art-making, creative writing and personal inquiry. Themes change each summer and explore the human experience as it intersects with creative practice. This summer's theme was PLACEMAKING, including explorations of home.

The publication’s format allows readers to adapt activities from our Summer Art Inquiry into any educational environment or individual artist’s creative practice.

The Program Resource Guide from the 2011 Art Inquiry is available for purchase online at cost value. The 80 page paperback book (7.44" x 9.68") with saddle-stitch binding and full-color interior ink costs $21.50. To buy a copy of the book, visit our Lulu store here.

The resource guide can be downloaded at no cost from our website, www.newurbanarts.org

View photos from our 2011 Art Inquiry here!

Cardboard Pancakes. A Winter-time Sale to Benefit New Urban Arts

2011-12-06T09:38:00.004-05:00

Cardboard Pancakes! A winter-time studio sale.

December 17th, 11AM-4PM at New Urban Arts 705 Westminster St, Providence.

Cardboard Pancakes will play host to an awesome group of all-star local artists, craftspeople, and makers, in a somewhat-commercial-yet-also-sociable context at the new NUA studio. Art, crafts, prints & posters, cards, comics & zines, ceramics, tapes, joolry, objects & curios, foodstuffs, and clothings will all be findable there, made by really great people.

Last-minute presents, things your friends make that you would rather buy from them in person than over the internet, unique objects, messy multiples, cheap art as well as fancy stufffff.... it's all gonna be here. We hope you will be here too!

This year, Cardboard Pancakes is hosted by New Urban Arts, and we're psyched that a portion of the sale's proceeds will go to supporting NUA's Arts Mentoring Programs for High School Students in Providence.

Threaded Together: Artist Mentors opening in our gallery Friday, December 9 from 5pm-8pm

2011-12-05T16:46:00.006-05:00

Each year, over 20 artists volunteer more than 4,000 hours to work with high school students as Artist Mentors at New Urban Arts. Please join us this Friday as they introduce their creative practice to our studio community through an exhibition of their artwork.

This exhibition opens Friday, December 9th, from 5-8 pm at 705 Westminster Street. The gallery opening event is free and open to the public. This year, we are honored to have such wonderful artists dedicated to our students.

>> Placemaking: Explorations in Home, summer 2011 Art Inquiry exhibition, opens Friday, October 28, 5-7pm

2011-10-17T15:37:00.010-04:00

New Urban Arts kicks off its gallery season with an art exhibition featuring work by students created this summer during our sixth annual Art Inquiry program. Each summer, New Urban Arts brings together artists and high school students for a thematic exploration of the human experience as it intersects with creative practice.

This art exhibition will kick-off in our new gallery on October 28, from 5-7pm, at 705 Westminster Street in Providence, RI.

Become an Artist Mentor at New Urban Arts

2011-09-29T22:16:00.001-04:00

Each fall, New Urban Arts selects 20 Artist Mentors to participate in our community art studio for high school students and emerging artists. Artist Mentors volunteer 6 hrs per week November 2011 through May 2012 to mentor high school students in developing a creative practice they can sustain throughout their lives.

Arts mentoring at New Urban Arts is a wonderful opportunity for artists and educators to learn how to effectively work with high school students in a community setting. Artist Mentors participate in a yearlong professional development program to support their growth as an artist and educator and are required to attend two weekend retreats held in Fall and Winter.

This year, New Urban Arts is looking for artist mentors in the following disciplines: drawing, painting, fashion design, printmaking, sculpture, installation, film/animation, graphic design, web design, music, sound recording, radio, poetry, digital and darkroom photography, art therapy, dance, yoga, mixed media, bookmaking and textiles. We are not limited to these media and are open to accommodate other media in our studio. We are also looking for tutors in math, science and writing.

2011-12 Artist Mentor Applications are here.

Applications are due October 11, 2011.

For more information, visit an Open House on Thursday Oct 6 from 5-7pm at New Urban Arts, located at 705 Westminster Street in Providence.

A Permanent Home for New Urban Arts

2011-09-20T12:45:00.004-04:00

Capital Campaign Kick Off
October 3rd, 2011

Monday 5PM-7PM

Light refreshments, speaking program at 6PM

New Urban Arts

705 Westminster Street (between and Dean and Stewart streets)

Providence RI 02903

HO HO TO KENNEDY PLAZA WE GO!

2011-09-07T11:23:00.009-04:00

As part of the Art Inquiry this summer, which explored creative placemaking, we embarked on a very special journey of creating an Art Skills Share Market in Kennedy Plaza.

On August 2nd, we packed up the car, grabbed a sign and boxes o' magic, which contained various art making supplies- love, ink, parachute poems, luck, book making supplies, mystery, paint markers, excitement, chalk, and not knowing what was going to happen, but certainty that it was going to be wonderful.

After two weeks of delving into our study on "place making," which included field trips of mills turned into sacred spaces and gypsy caravan case studies, it was our turn to turn the flat grasses of Kennedy Plaza into a place of discovery, creativity, and opportunity both for the young artists of the Inquiry program, as well as the children, parents, and chillin' folks in KP.

The spices we used in cooking up our traveling skills share caravan included a special visit from Eric Rice, a local artist and designer who recently won a nationwide fort building competition held by director Spike Jonze and Booooooom! to celebrate the opening of “Where the Wild Things Are,” the children's book, Roxaboxen, written by Alice Mclerran and illustrated by Barbara Cooney, about a group of kids who transform an empty hill into a city, and the the documentary Gypsy Caravan, which is in the story of the nomadic offerings and experiences of Roma musicians.

Artists worked in teams to design, build, and execute various skills share stations. Tremell headed up a calligraphy station next to Legend who gracefully taught how to make parachute poems, inspired by the soldiers deployed overseas right now. Sara, Yoli, and Mandara lead people in bookmaking on a lovely cloth that they set up to look like a magic carpet! Sherly and Ashley set up an awesome chalk station with the skyline of Providence and opportunity for people to change what they wanted in the city. Naomy and Dakota strutted their skills with some sweet street art. Maddie, Aaron, and Divine took the ground to the next level with a makeshift dance floor and taught moves and grooves! A place was born. We were invited back to Kennedy Plaza and eagerly await our next nomadic skills share possibly sometime this Spring.

Special thanks to Greater Kennedy Plaza for having us!

Moving Pararde

2011-08-25T11:27:00.008-04:00

Last week, NUA on the Move organized the New Urban Arts moving parade. We formed a human chain and in 20 minutes of passing boxes, bins, books and crates, after the dust had settled, we moved a ton of stuff into our new home.

Dakota moving his summer project.

Thank you Artist Mentor Jori Ketten for this and many other pictures soon to come on our flickr page. To see some video of the parade by student alumni Liz K., check out our facebook page.

Thank you everyone that came out to help--it was a beautiful and fun afternoon. And it made a big difference. Big, big congratulations to NUA on the Move for their great work!

A Paradelle: Untitlement Project Summer 2011

2011-08-19T16:42:00.004-04:00

Hello NUA community! This is Michi, from the Untitlement Project!!!!!!

This summer, I participated in one of New Urban Arts' summer programs known as the Untitlement Project. The main idea or main goal was to have high school teenage writers expand their writing using the themes of identity, gender issues, and social injustices. We were led by two awesome poets (Jamila Woods and Jorge Vargas) and we were separated by two groups; (A boys group, and a girls group). Girls met on Monday, and Wednesday. Boys met on Tuesday and Thursday. Then on Friday the two groups met together and discussed about topics that involved the two genders. When we met on our days separately, our mentors would give us prompts that were based on the themes we were doing that summer.

My favorite prompt was the Paradelle activity. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines must form completely new lines by using only the words from the preceding lines. The final stanza must contain every word from the first three stanzas, and only those words, again only using them once, to form completely new lines. Find more information on Paradelles here. The theme of our Paradelle activity was our bodies and what we like or dislike about our bodies. I believe that every poet should at least experience this form of writing.

I hope you enjoy this Paradelle poem I came up with because I do. ☺

Paradelle (My Body)

I love when you’re alone; your eyes begin to sweat.
I love when you’re alone; your eyes begin to sweat.
Joy or pain, we get the same result.
Joy or pain, we get the same result.
We get the same sweat when joy or pain.
Your eyes begin to sweat pain.

Drop by drop, 1/100 of an emotion is released.
Drop by drop, 1/100 of an emotion is released.
My soul is in the atmosphere.
My soul is in the atmosphere.
1/100 of my soul is in drop by drop.
My soul is an emotion.

Hold your tears when looking.
Hold your tears when looking.
Maybe I’m not human.
Maybe I’m not human.
They’re not human hold your tears.
I’m your tear I’m not human.

I love your not human tears.
Drop by drop; I’m your pain.
Your sweat is my atmosphere.
Pain is your emotion.
1/100 of a human, I will hold your tears.
When you tear, I begin to sweat.

What Does New Urban Arts Mean To You?

2011-08-15T21:14:00.003-04:00

On Thursday, August 11, NUA On The Move hosted a studio packing party. Even though packing and moving an entire art studio is serious business, the event had a particularly New Urban Arts feel to it complete with good music, awesome people, sumi ink drawing, pizza, and a free store. NUA On The Move summer intern Katie O'Connell painted a prompt on the wall "What Does NUA Mean To You?" and invited participants to pin their thoughts on the wall. Here are the responses we collected:

NUA is the home away from home where you can get super messy with no consequences!! (Well, as long as you clean up...)

It means a lot to me. It a place where people can come and express themself through art.

Happiness

Awesome people X crazy cool environment = NUA!!

To me NUA is a place to go to and forget about everything else in the world. A refuge in which I express myself through paper, and interact with awesome people. We make NUA and without us, NUA wouldn't be such a wonderful place.

A second home!!

New Urban Arts is like cheesecake, sweet and good.

A place where things happen.

NUA is magical. It's the place I dreamed of when I was young. A haven for creative, sensitive, outstanding people!

NUA is the fourteenth, twenty-first and first letter of the alphabet. And a model democracy where anything is possible.

Cool and awkward and friendly people who like art, like me!

Freedom. Art. Loudness. Glitter. Unicorns.

NUA = An awesome place

Art + Lots of Love. Music!

NUA is love to me. NUA is my first second home. I'm sad we are leaving but ready to welcome the new NUA

An amazing magical place...OF DOOM >:D

It means the world, and some Reces Peanut Butter Cup

Taking risks without judgement and knowing you will be celebrated!

New Urban Arts is a cool place--It's like sprinkles on an ice cream or the strawberry on top of the cake.

New Urban Arts is a place where people listen.

Drawing stuff is cool :D No, but really...a place to relax and get your creative mind flowing.

Moving Week

2011-08-14T18:55:00.001-04:00

New Urban Arts is MOVING into 705 Westminster St. and we need YOUR help

Thanks to your help, we have boxes packed, labeled ready to go, but now we need as much help as possible to make the short (118 ft) walk from 743 Westminster Street to 705 Westminster Street. Moving is being coordinated by Artist Mentor Julia Gualtieri and team NUA On The Move, super intern Louis Martinez and Program Coordinator Jesse Banks III. Drop by any of the times listed and someone will point you in the right direction. Any time you can spare will make a BIG difference.

You can drop by and help us next week any of the following days and times:

Monday: 3-4PM--Dance your way through 705 with us! We'll walk, crawl, leap, roll and more and together, become really familiar with our new home. Come in comfy clothes.

Tuesday: 1-6PM--MOVING-drop in anytime to help with moving. Louis, Jesse, Julia or NUA On the Move students will point you in the right direction.

Thursday: 1-6PM--MOVING-drop in anytime to help with moving. Louis, Jesse, Julia or NUA On the Move students will point you in the right direction.

Thursday 2-3PM--PARADE, Organized by NUA on The Move
We'll form a human chain from 743 to 705 and move boxes bucket brigade style.

Friday: 1-6PM--MOVING-drop in anytime to help with moving. Louis, Jesse, Julia or NUA On the Move students will point you the right direction.

***If you come--please wear close-toed shoes (no flip flops) and be prepared to follow ALL the directions of staff and the NUA On the Move students so that we do this safely!***

Sitting in the Questions

2011-08-14T18:30:00.004-04:00

New Publication: Institute of Other Significant Pursuits: Sitting in the Questions

As part of our committment to sharing knowledge about our practice as widely and freely as possible and supporting and developing the many emerging leaders in our growing community, we launched a new program last summer, the Institute of Other Significant Pursuits, a three day long conversation on what it means to be a community artist and educator beyond the walls of our studio here on Westminster Street.

Ten of our former artist mentors, all strongly influenced by their experience as artist mentors at New Urban Arts, were invited back to "sit in the questions" of each of their current pursuits, whether as artists, teachers, students, mentors, activists, mothers and more.

A limited edition artist publication is now available documenting this convening for others who are also in the messy pursuit of making, mentoring, nurturing creativity and "inhabiting the questions." It includes a series of postcards and handprinted envelope/poster in addition to a paper back book with saddle stitch binding and full-color interior ink. Contact Program Director Sarah Meyer at sarah@newurbanarts.org if you are interested in purchasing this limited edition publication.

Published through Lulu Press, Inc, the 80-page paperback book is also available as an on-demand, full-color print edition. It can be purchased at cost value for $21.50 by visiting our online store.

The paperback book can be downloaded at no cost by visiting www.newurbanarts.org here.

NUA PACKNG PARTY

2011-08-11T15:27:00.002-04:00

My name is Chris Jorge and on August 11,2011, Nua On The Move had a packing party. The purpose of the packing party was to pack everything from our current space so we could transfer everything into the new space later on. During the party, we had pizza and a free store. I had a chance to interview Jacques Achilles and this is how it turned out:

CJ: What did you think of the packing party?
JA: It was fun
CJ: What did you find out about the packing party?
JA: Nua has a lot of stuff that is not used and unnoticed
CJ: What was your first thought of the NUA packing party?
JA: Help NUA pack
CJ: What does NUA mean to you?
JA: making art/making friends/witness Noel have tantrums

Summer Art Inquiry Visits Witchclub

2011-08-10T17:01:00.006-04:00

Hello dear New Urban Arts fans, friends and family! This is Sarah Greenfield, one of the mentors for this year's Summer Art Inquiry on the theme “placemaking.” Our program ended last Thursday with a final critique of students' individual projects---if you want to see them (and you really do), keep your eyes peeled for the invite to our show in October!

Many of their independent projects were inspired by a field trip we took the first week, a visit to a collective living art studio in Providence constructed entirely out of found and recycled materials called “Witch Club.” I'd never seen anything like it, and I'm pretty sure neither had any of the Inquiry students.

As the students looked around, eyes getting wider and smiles getting bigger every second, we realized what a gift we'd been given---access to a secret and magical place. We created some gift art in advance as a thank you to WC for inviting us into their home, and one of the first things I saw as I walked in the door was one of our students handing a bouquet of painted paper flowers to a WC member.

The WC members led us past rooms constructed from discarded wood and fabric, boxes full of art supplies, musical instruments, makeshift furniture, and projects-in-progress, to the center of their community space. There, they offered us tea and homemade fritters, and after we'd all introduced ourselves, WC explained the history and intentions of the space and answered questions.

The conversation we had then---about the power of creating your own home; about people (particularly people socialized female in this culture) reclaiming the act of building, and teaching themselves the skills of carpentry and other traditionally male-centered forms of construction; about the benefits and drawbacks of living in ways that are considered outside the norm; about how hard it is to share space and how beautiful it can be to welcome people in; about making art every day; about not giving up on the dreams you had for your life when you were too young to “know better”---was a conversation I will never forget.

The diversity of age, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender, and general life experience in all the members of that conversation created a rare cultural exchange. This kind of learning, where knowledge is constructed through community conversation, rather than passed from teacher to student, is at the core of New Urban Arts' philosophy. To see it blossom in another space, with members of the NUA family as well as new friends, was a powerful experience.

Our visit ended with an impromptu jam session and dancing. Other students were drawn to a huge “free bin” of clothes and random items, and had a great time creating new outfits. When it came time to leave, both the Art Inquiry and the Witch Club were sad to say goodbye. We invited them to come visit us at the studio (which several of them did at our final critique), and to come to our show in October. They gave us their new P.O. box address, and we promised to write.

Our journey to Witch Club became more than just a field trip---it created new relationships, and heavily influenced some students' final projects. Several female students were inspired to tackle carpentry and large-scale construction, and for another student, the visit to the space caused a reflection on the idea of home and welcoming that he developed into a silkscreen project. I'd like to thank Emmy Bright for suggesting the trip, my co-mentor Victoria for arranging it, Kedrin Frias and Elizabeth Keith for accompanying us, and most of all the members of Witch Club for their hospitality and ongoing support of New Urban Arts.

Become An Artist Mentor at New Urban Arts

2011-08-05T19:38:00.003-04:00

Each fall, New Urban Arts selects 20 Artist Mentors to participate in our interdisciplinary art studio on Westminster Street, across from Classical and Central High schools. This year Artist Mentors volunteer November 2011 through May 2012 to mentor high school students in developing a creative practice they can sustain throughout their lives.

Arts mentoring at New Urban Arts is a wonderful opportunity for artists and educators to learn how to effectively work with high school students in a community setting. In 2009, New Urban Arts was honored as one of the top youth arts programs in the country on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, receiving the nation's highest honor for the field of out-of-school time arts and humanities programs.

In the past, Artist Mentors have been high school students, college students, graduate students, and artists from the community. Because New Urban Arts emphasizes peer-to-peer and participatory learning in our studio, Artist Mentors must be able to connect on a personal and artistic level with teenagers.

Artist Mentors are nurturing, resourceful, flexible under pressure, open to taking risks, willing to learn, and able to commit 6 hours per week during an entire school year. Artist Mentors participate in a yearlong professional development program to support their growth as an artist and educator and are required to attend two weekend retreats held in Fall and Winter.

We also offer Artist Mentor positions through off-site work-study programs for eligible university students. Work-study students also have work responsibilities that include an additional four hours per week.

This year, New Urban Arts is looking for artist mentors in the following disciplines: drawing, painting, fashion design, sewing, printmaking, screen printing, sculpture, installation, film/animation, graphic design, web design, song writing, music, sound recording, radio, painting, drawing, poetry, mixed media, spoken word performance, digital and darkroom photography, art therapy, dance, yoga, mixed media, bookmaking and textiles. We are not limited to these media and are open to accommodate other media in our studio.

2011-12 Artist Mentor Applications now available at www.newurbanarts.org. To have an application mailed to you, please contact New Urban Arts at 401.751.4556 or info@newurbanarts.org.

Applications are due October 11, 2011.

“I first came to the studio to share what I know about making comics. Now it feels like a second home. I have a new understanding of what it means to be a creative person.” Melissa Mendes, Artist Mentor, 2006-2008

Untitlement Project: Summer 2011

2011-08-05T17:52:00.002-04:00

Hi there! This is Maxine Wright, reporting for duty.

This summer, I participated in one of New Urban Arts’s summer programs, the Untitlement Project. The goal of the Untitlement Project was to promote discussion and exploration of pertinent issues such as gender, identity, relationships, and body image through poetry. It was a wonderful experience, and one I hope many other teenagers can share eventually. To help us write, the mentors (Jamila Woods and Jorge Vargas) would give us prompts, or suggestions and instructions out of which we would write a poem.

One of my favorite prompts was the “god of your heart” activity. To write this poem, we were asked to describe the “god” of our heart: what this person (or entity) did, looked like, felt, and how they protected our hearts.

This prompt really interested me because I had never looked at matters of the heart as something someone protected, and it was interesting for me to think of my heart as a person. This is the poem I came up with.

God of My Heart

Builds walls of glass shards and apple blossoms
sharp tangy blood smell of those who came
before
mixed with
the aching sweet
of frustration and Fantasy
of Hope and heartbreak
wails and sobs
sighs with ecstasy
Light Fresh New
becomes
expired
and
you don’t know what you want
daze of confusion
kaleidoscope of choices
can’t escape past present or future
someone is waiting beyond that wall
hands bloodied scars
from beating against unyielding
gates
I can’t let you in.

Noel

2011-08-03T17:20:00.001-04:00

Hello 743......or should I say goodbye.

New Urban Arts has been my home for about 3 years so far and this move was some thing that I disagreed with. I did not want New Urban Arts to move to a bigger and nicer space. I was going to kill Jason for buying a new building . But the main reason for my hatred was that I thought all the memories of the old space would just go away. That the new generation of young artists would take over and make NUA a different space. Make a space that only they knew about. A place that the older generation couldn't get used to or just couldn't feel comfortable in. But someone change my mind. This person told me that it's not the space that makes New Urban Arts, it's the people. It's people like you, me and all these people around us that make the studio wonderful. NUA could move to New Jersey and every one here would move to New Jersey just to make art here...there...whatever. Plus the new space has more room. Which is wonderful. Now we can actually make large scaled pieces of art work. Well goodbye 743...hello 705!

Blogging to improvisation

2011-07-26T17:34:00.003-04:00

My name is Christopher Jorge, the favorite of NUA. I would like to thank the rest of NUA ON THE MOVE and visiting artist Bashir for participating in this history changing program. Over the course of NUA ON THE MOVE I have learned how to screen print and I learned how to use flickr (a photo sharing website). I guess some of us have learned more about what a home is and about each other. I feel as if everybody is getting along and having fun. We are working on planning a packing party, were we are gonna invite the community to pack and throw trash away, yaaay!!! It's gonna be an event in which it brings people together to New Urban Arts. We will also have a junk sale in which; yes you guessed it, junk will be given away. I wanted to sell everything for a dollar but, the rest of the gang prefers things to be given away for hugs etc.. I enjoy personally the idea of NUA moving since a new space will be better for everyone. Not only will there not be mold but, a bigger space for people to interact. When i think of moving I think of change and new beginnings. And that is what NUA ON THE MOVE IS ABOUT. Change will be made to the new space and new beginnings for the coming freshman and new friendships. NUA is a home among homes since it's a place to be yourself. I am proud to be with ON THE MOVE and to participate in this glorious and memorable occasion.

One of my favorite memories was the Lock In which i participated in two years ago. During the lock in there was Step mania (which is like dance dance revolution). A few other activities were offered and we had to stay up all night without falling asleep. Subway was offered which was good. I enjoyed the lock in and staying up from six in the afternoon to six in the morning. I was disappointed that we didn't have it this year. I am hoping that we will have it next year. Check out the pictures I've been taking to document the move!

Time to get WILD!!

2011-07-20T17:46:00.004-04:00

Hello my dear dudes and dudettes ! I'm Jessabel...During this week we have witnessed many different things around NUA...especially in the Basement. We actually managed to clear a pathway that allows us to walk by more comfortable! I remember seeing a mannequin, old screen prints, books, and a bunch of other stuff a lot of which are now considered "Junk". while working hard on documentation and making sure that the last days left inside this building are all recorded so that everyone who know, don't know but will know about NUA get a picture of how important this building is to us and the special memories it will hold forever (Don't worry guys, The internet will not be the only place in which we document THE MOVE....We're also making ZINES. and possibly even an artist book) There are so many ways of documentation it is really hard for us to make up our minds as to which one to choose. In the meantime as we work we have been creating a lot of wonderful memories from this great experience and historical moment, NEVER AGAIN TO BE SEEN! It is very exciting, overwhelming, and a bunch of different emotions that mix together and slam us in the face as the day gets nearer....sheesh, even though Katie and I only have approximately a year being members of NUA it became a year that seems like forever....

Ohai~ Katie here :3

Yesterday, Jessabel, Ian, Julia, and I went into the screen print room to explore the different stories behind each print. After Ian explained the history of all of the prints, the one that really stuck out to us, was the Surfing Clock, a print made by a boy named Alex, who decided to make this print because he wanted to imitate the designs of Abercrombie and American Eagle. You would never guess that's what he was trying to do. Instead of making a plain surfer shirt, he just kept adding and adding to this epic design until he created one of the best pieces in the print room. At first glance, it's just a clock on a surf board. But then you actually look at it closely for a long period of time and little details that you had never noticed before start popping out. The "surf's up" in what appears to be the clocks hat. The kite flying in the sky. The globe peeping out of the corner. Abercrombie could never come up with an idea this good.

JESSABEL

KATIE

(^u^)---(o_o)---(._.)

2011-07-14T18:43:00.004-04:00

I, Lesly Cruz, take my first steps into the building I've seen across from Classical so many times...and feel immeditely out of place...Walking into New Urban Arts I went through 3 emotions the first minute~. (^u^)---(o_o)---(._.) I felt like a total creeper. @_@ Being completely new NUA and recognizing no one caused me to panic ‘NO…AH…I’m going to end up a weird loner’ >_< Not before long I found a familiar face and the super friendly staff (Sara, Jason, & Julia) allowed me to feel not as completely out of place.

Intros were quick; Jason led the way to the new building~.

/@o@ / Waaa~!! It looks so Amazing~!!

Currently, the inside looks completely different (and more dangerous!) Construction workers everywhere, newly constructed walls, and TWICE as much space. I spent the first 5 minutes looking around the floors in order to avoid stepping in another cement pit. (Darn city construction workers! *shakes fist*)

The rest of the day is a blur for me… (Short term memory >_<)

OH!! STICKY NOTES!! :3 We like posted sticky notes on what we were interesting in doing~. (Documentation, field trips, event planning, conversation, cleaning, etc.)

~~~`

The second day was the best~. Radio guy John and Jori came in to talk about/demonstrate documentation. (Stop motion videos are awesome!! 0u0)

And, unfortunately, due to my horrible memory everything afterwards is kinda sketchy >A< (I need a trigger word)

But I do remember something important. I, along with another newbie, were asked something like, “How do you guys feel about the move?”

Gosh, I have no idea how to answer that. Some of my fellow Demi-Gods ;) ,such as Noel and Chris, have been here for a really, really long time. And I just arrived to NUA; I haven’t even been here for…*counts on fingers* more than 8 hours~. So…yea. I don’t have any of that deep emotion attachment that the others in my group have; I don’t have any real, real close connections to the mentors. I barely know where anything is in the room and I have no idea who made the wonderful pieces of art scattered around the room. (._.) But in the short time that I’ve been here I gained a sort of fondness for NUA. I love how everyone is friendly and passionate~! The room is always busy---* Drawing wars going on, movies, construction, salsa dancing~. XD I feel… comfortable. :)And although, I don’t have any really awesome memories about this place right now I’m sure to make some during this move~.

Yea…sappy ending~.

-Lesly Cruz

A Self-Perceived NEWBIE Perspective

2011-07-14T16:30:00.002-04:00

Hi! The name is Carmela, Carmela Wilkins. Its's been two days for me so far and i already have a small list of adjectives describing how I felt when I walked into New Urban Arts: open-minded, nervous, awkward, comforting. These are just a few words to describe the experiences for me coming into NUA, it was a total array of mixed emotions, it was like I was overwhelmed but in different ways…It was like odd, but then awesome too! I saw my awesomely awesome friend Noel and I gave him a hug and like he introduced me to like a branch of other super cool people. That was when I slipped into my comfort zone. I was amongst individuals of all kinds who related to me in one way or another rather if it was anime, fashion, or our quirky traits. I began to know and become more familiar with the demigods in my internship group (a.k.a. NUA ON THE MOVE) , consisting of mostly members who have been here more than I have stepped foot into the door. Who I shall not dare and forget their names, Chris, Katie, Noel, Jessabel our superb mentor Julia, and another newbie like me, Lesly. We are the ones who are going to alter and blow everyones mind with our progress on the move to a new location, as the name suggests lol. Conjuring up all of our brain power and creativity we are going to document, have field trips (our little leisure :), plan events, and what everyone is looking forward to the most, packing and cleaning! Yay…Already adjusting to the changing environment here, things are bound to get to an extreme excitement level!

Art Party videos are going up!

2011-05-20T22:23:00.000-04:00

Check out the videos from tonight's party on Facebook!

The 2011 Art Party VII

2011-05-20T21:19:00.000-04:00

Wow, this night just got so much better! Sarah's baby son, Grayson, is behind me while I'm writing this, and he keeps grabbing my hair and playing with it.

Jason's on stage now. He says that a student told him once that this was the first place they had heard an adult talk about something that they learned. He's talking about his time in the studio and reflecting on how his idea of New Urban Arts has changed: this place is about art-making, but also about building community and relationships. "Let's draw" is also code for "Let's talk".

Dylan (on guitar) and Devine (on the mic) are on stage now to do some improvisational music. Devine's making up lyrics about summer, at the crowd's suggestion, on the spot. "I was going to school, and it was such a bummer... then I found out that in two weeks, it was gonna be summer!" Now he's got a more challenging subject: chicken bones.

To round out our night, Sam hosted the fashion show, including handmade skirts, hats, masks, jackets, vests, and full-on dresses! The show was an amazing demonstration of our students' creativity, and the models (some of whom were wearing their own creations) made everyone's work look fabulous.

True to NUA style, our night ends with smiles, hugs, and a noisy, jumpy dance party. Good night internet, and farewell to our dear 743 Westminster!

The 2011 Art Party VI

2011-05-20T20:23:00.000-04:00

Jorge just jumped up on the mic to introduce some events. First up is Michi's movie, "My Dreams". She composited herself into a bunch of music videos and famous movies. Here she is running with Jimmy Stewart away from a plane in "North by Northwest", and now she's dancing with some creepy skeleton guy in a black-and-white music video!

Now, random acts of poetry! Eric's on the mic and is reading a poem in Spanish by a Guatemalan author. If I weren't trying to type at the same time, I might understand one word out of every ten. Regardless, the flow is beautiful and it's a really meaningful poem for Eric.

Michi's in the spotlight again now, to read us one of her poems: "My Eyes". If you have a copy of this year's issue of Flip, the studio zine, you can read her poem.

Legend's got a poem too, "Somewhere in Texas", and her delivery is powerful. Everybody keeps forgetting they're supposed to snap for poetry, not cheer! We're just not that reserved here I guess. =)

The 2011 Art Party V

2011-05-20T20:04:00.000-04:00

The first phase of the Art Party ended with a surprise group singalong of "Don't Stop Believing", with confetti raining down from the sky. Now the studio's a lot more chill, as people wander around to look at the art and talk with each other about the great year we had.

But! Excitement is coming up. Kedrin just announced that the fashion show is happening in half an hour. Once I figure out how to upload videos to Facebook, we'll have video of that, plus the artwork on the walls and the crowd admiring it, as well as the awesome singalong from before.

The 2011 Art Party IV

2011-05-20T18:31:00.003-04:00

Some quotes from the honoring of NUA seniors!!!

Adrian & Shirla: [my fingers were not fast enough to catch this speech, but it was very lovely!!]

Alice & Tina: "Tina is a pillar of light and focus...I look up to your art...I am so blessed to have known you, and Clark College is so blessed to have you next year. Girl, you're a leader"

Jane & Donna: "Donna is the first person I ever made something with."

Jason & Saulo: "One of the first students I met, was Saulo."

Jessica & Maria: "Jessica has a gentle caring generous personality..I am really proud of you baby squirrel"

Jorge & Christopher George: "The first word that comes to mind when i think of Christopher is fire...it's been a pleasure to work with you in this space

Evan & Jacque: "Three words to describe Jacque: eccentric, weird, and exceedingly geeky...Good luck next year at RISD, and more than that, good luck with anything and everything you want to achieve, I know you're capable of it."

Kedrin & William: "Many years ago, I met William...he came in and was like "Dya know how to make a helmet?"... the funny thing is, he asked me how to make something I'd never made before, and now I make stuff outta cardboard. Whenever you see William he has something that he just made last night."

Caitlin & Abby: "We've done lots of fun things together. Abby means a lot to me...she's a badass woman and also extremely gentle, and very funny."

Alice, Jane & Pamela: "Pam is pretty incredible...the second you meet her you know there is an entire world inside her that you have to be very privileged to be let into"

Jesse & Maxine: "She is extremely caring...and if you didn't come in every single day and bust my chops and give me a hug when you are leaving I don't know what I would do. I hope you have an amazing wonderful time at WashU cause you are the best"

Dan & Ava: "Ava, only someone with your patience, sense of humor and beliefs could inspire me this way... I am so proud of you"

The 2011 Art Party III

2011-05-20T18:03:00.003-04:00

Time for a special shout out/thank you to studio Mentors and Study Buddies!

NUA students are lining up with flowers in hand...

Some quotes from Students:

"My mentor [Victoria Ruiz] is the most amazing thing to ever happen to my art"

"My mentor [Caitlin Cali] is easy to talk to...she has been amazing since the day I met her"

"My mentor [Evan] is a brilliant person that understands that art is superior to all"

"My mentor [Dylan Block-Harley] is Garfunkel and I am Simon. He is a quiet gentle mystical creature. He is the only one who understands me"

"My mentor [Maria DiFranco] is outgoing, willing to try new things...she's like a super mentor"

"My mentor [Jori Ketten] inspired my mind"

"My mentor is tall and bursting with energy. And he's Canadian. And his name is Rob [MacInnis]"

"My mentor [Sophie Tintori] is really sweet and takes the way I feel into consideration, and we can still get stuff done. SWAG."

"My mentor [Jamila Woods] has the most powerful voice I have ever heard. She amazes me."

"My mentor [Alice Costas" is wicked awesome, she has a bright personality, and she is amazing."

"She [Sam Merritt] is one of my favorite people to be around, and I don't like many people."

"My mentor [Jadrian Miles] is friendly, smart, and fun to be around. He comes up with really good ideas for things"

"My mentor [Christina Lawrence] has unconditional support...our personalities balance each other out"

"My mentor [Carole Ann Penney] is friendly and quiet at the same time. She's good at explaining things so that its easy to understand."

"My mentor [Andrew Migliori] is tall and sarcastic. We make videos and claymation together all the time. I tried to I like that he puts up with me and is patient."

"My mentor [Jorge Vargas] is like an older brother to me, to be honest. i want to thank him for being there for me when i needed someone to talk to."

I wanna thank [Morgan Fagant] for helping me on my project.

My mentor [Abel Hernandez] is a very hardworking mentor, he doesn't give up on you. He is a cool friend, and an excellent drawer.

Saving the best for last, my mentor [Kevin Gonsalves] is energetic and funny. We party and do art at the same time.

My mentor [Andrew Oesch] is weird but fun.

and now... BIG ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR KEDRIN AND EMMY!!!

"The mentors' mentors" :)

"You tie together this whole experience" - Appropriately, Students and Mentors are invited to adorn Kedrin & Emmy with pieces of string and say something beautiful about how AWESOME these two people really are.

"You're like my best friend here, you teach me to be a better artist"

"Somehow despite your fuller than full life..you find ways to talk to me about my own creative practice and art"

"For being there when I didn't know quite how to mentor...and for being one of the greatest friends ever"

The 2011 Art Party II

2011-05-20T17:57:00.003-04:00

It's relatively quiet in the studio as Kedrin and Yoli (the Unicorn) welcome Art Partiers into the space.

Kedrin has just made the slightly ominous announcement:

"For the first time ever, YOU will be part of what goes on...you'll know when..."

We're listening to:

1. A big round of applause for NUA Students & Mentors...congrats for a hard years work!

2. Another big round of applause for our sponsors & neighbors Providence Pizza Company & West Side Arts.

3. A third big round of applause for our DJ's for tonight, Dan & Saulo!

****As many of you know, this is our LAST ART PARTY IN THIS SPACE! We have a very colorful looking "Memory Booth" set up to record photo, video, and text memories of all our Art Partiers tonight.

Now we're welcoming the first performers to the stage! Max & Dylan strummin on the guitar, with Chris Jorge on vocals!

to be continued...

The 2011 Art Party

2011-05-20T17:47:00.003-04:00

Hello NUA Fam!

This is Jamila Woods here, a current poetry mentor at New Urban Arts. The 2011 Art Party is alive and kickin! For the next hour or so I'll be here trying to give you all a picture of what's happening tonight at 743 Westminster!

Also check out the live stream action here! http://www.ustream.tv/newurbanarts

Right now:

We're listening to Common "I Used to Love H.E.R."

We're askin "Orange you glad you came tonight?" munchin on orange goodies at the snack table...featuring but not limited to: Cheeze Its, nacho cheese Doritos, OJ, orange soda, and carrots & hummus for the health nuts :)

Kedrin has just announced that we are "ONE MINUTE!" away from start time...so stay tuned!

A Perspective from a Student, 2011 Annual Campaign Testimonial

2011-05-17T20:40:00.002-04:00

I have been coming to New Urban Arts for three years. I am also on STAB, which is the Studio Team Advisory Board. We plan many different events at New Urban Arts. Like Spirit Day, which we had yesterday, which involved fort building, jewelry making and other activities.

At New Urban Arts I work with many different mediums, but my artwork usually ends up being big, colorful, bright and full of glitter. One day I plan to be a fashion designer.

Before New Urban Arts I was very shy, quiet, and didn’t have many friends. I didn’t have hair either. Imagine me BALD! I had a typical routine that I did every day. Wake up, go to school, go back home and do homework and some chores.

I didn’t know much about Rhode Island in general. All I knew was Cranston Street, Main Street, school and Elmwood Little League Baseball Field. My life was pretty much boring. I had never even ridden public transportation before.

But then one day, a really good friend of mine, Bridgette, took me to go see New Urban Arts. At first I was very scared because there were so many people here. And Jesse had a very angry look on his face. He gave me these papers to sign and a student named Jackson gave me a tour around the place. A dark room? A drying rack? I didn’t even know there were things like that. It was all very confusing to me.

After that I didn’t come back for awhile. Also It took me forever to fill out those papers. They gave me very hard questions. Typically, your parents fill out applications for you. There was one that I struggled to fill out and it scared me at the same time. It was the one about my sexual orientation. At the time I didn’t know if I was gay or not. Plus I thought they would make fun out of me because of that. And that they would tell my mother.

So one day I had the courage to go back to New Urban Arts. But I only planned to go for half an hour, including the 15 minutes walk to New Urban Arts from school. There was this one artist mentor, David, taking a couple of students to the jewelry district to go see an exhibit. I told him I didn’t want to go, but then Bridgette forced me to go. And in the end I was happy that she did.

When I saw the work in the gallery I thought everything was really amazing. It showed me that art isn’t only just splatter paintings and cartoon drawings. It was the start of my life as an artist at New Urban Arts.

New Urban Arts gave me the opportunity to see Providence. It didn’t limit me just to New Urban Arts. When I made friendships with mentors, it kind of gave me a VIP pass to many activities they were doing outside of New Urban Arts.

Like helping out Andrew with a project at the RISD Museum. Or going to the Athenaeum with the Summer Art Inquiry. Or going to the Secret Restaurant and helping Emmy and other students make lanterns for an apartment that serves dinner weekly – but I can’t tell you more, it’s a secret. These are places I had never been to before. Working with these mentors have really opened my eyes to see the artistic side of Providence.

New Urban Arts also broke my shell. The atmosphere at NUA made me want to be kind and loving and to be funny just like the people were here at New Urban Arts. It also gave me tons of love every single day. When I walked through that door, I got a warm and loving hug and it just made everything bad go away.

The hugs and love meant a lot to me. It gave me hope and made me believe I was a part of something big. It also made me feel like I was the best artist in Rhode Island. Like everything I made was just pure genius.

Last, NUA made me loud.

It made me want to live for the next day. It gave me the voice and opportunity to say something that really matter to me. When no other place would.

It also gave me a place where my glitter-izing skills were appreciated.

New Urban Arts means the world to me.

- Noel Puello

A Perspective from an Artist Mentor, 2011 Annual Campaign Testimonial

2011-05-17T20:31:00.002-04:00

People say that it is all about the journey and not the destination. With my almost 3 years as the film mentor at New Urban Arts, the experiences with the students, fellow mentors and staff have completely changed me as a person. As someone who completely felt that she had lost her talent and desire to ever create art after years of being burnt out from meaningless jobs, I realized after starting here at New Urban Arts that what I thought I had lost, was there all along.

On my first day of mentoring, I was nervous. So nervous in fact, that I didn’t want to leave my car. You see, from the outside, the studio looks like a place where kids hang out. But for those who truly experience it and see it, there is a feeling of magic to this place and you feel it the minute you cross those doors.

I experienced it the first time that day when I entered the studio and met my group of students. The students couldn’t be more different from each other. They were tough, opinionated and as I would find out later, extremely talented. And here I was feeling like a fake, a phony. I was the new film mentor who hadn’t made a movie in years. They were giving me the eye, waiting patiently for me to show them something. Anything. It is very hard to create a movie in two hours, let alone with people who don’t even know each other. So, I went to my last resort.

“What is your favorite movie?”, I asked. This question would start a debate that would last those two hours. There is a beauty to seeing students who normally wouldn’t even talk to each other, find a common connection. And from that moment, I felt a connection with my students that would continue even till this day.

New Urban Arts pushed me as an artist and made me see myself in a new light: as someone who enjoyed working with kids, and was pretty good at making art. I will certainly not forget the fun and frustrating times, those moments where I questioned myself as an artist and those moments where I wished the conversations would not end.

Three months ago, I left my position as a mentor to accept a job as the new Camper Recruiter at The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, which provides the camp experience to kids with serious illnesses. I would have never felt comfortable enough to pursue this position without my experiences at NUA. And while it is extremely difficult to leave, especially all those students and people I love, I realized that the spirit of this place isn’t contained in these 4 walls but in the relationships and people who carry New Urban Arts with them.

- Morgan Fagant

Alumni Student's Remarks at "Home is Where the HeArt Is" Annual Campaign Event , April 2011

2011-05-17T20:24:00.007-04:00

The idea of home makes me think of firsts.

Home is where I took my first steps,
said my first words,
broke my first toy,
lost my first tooth.

I've always thought of New Urban Arts as my home, and it's where I've experienced my other firsts.
First time someone laughed at one of my jokes
First time I danced in public
I heard Journey's 'Don't Stop Believing'
First time I led a workshop
Developed my own film
Stretched my own silkscreen
First time I felt understood

In middle school, I often found myself sitting outside the principal's office listening to adults talk about how I should be reprimanded for the trouble I caused.

At New Urban Arts I would cause the same trouble and instead of seeking to reprimand they sought to understand. Instead of making me sit outside in a chair, I was invited into a conversation in which I learned the difference between being in trouble and being trouble. By being trouble, I can make a difference. I can create change in the world, and lead others to do the same.

In my first year here, I came to this very same event and saw JJ receive his Sandra Olson award, and in his speech, he talked about everything he learned in this space.
It was the first time I heard an adult talk about learning.
I became open to the idea that I could learn more than art in this space. It felt like my welcome mat into New Urban Arts.

And welcome mats aren't exclusive to entrances. You see them on your way out, too. This is my last year at New Urban Arts, since I'm going to be at Marlboro College in the fall, and receiving this award is like seeing the other side of the welcome mat.

But more than that, it feels like my home told me that it loved being my home.
So, thank you for this award.
And for being my home.

- Carolina "CJ" Jimenez

How To Fair

2011-05-13T14:16:00.003-04:00

On Saturday, two teenagers hosted a How To Fair for their mentors and peers at New Urban Arts. It was a day-long celebration of things we know how to do. Mentors and artists led booths that shared how to wrap a burrito, how to make smores in the winter, how to marbelize paper with shaving cream, how to make ooblek, how to make a choker, how to screenprint ... and more!

View photos here.

I often wear many hats at our events, but this time I only wore two: witness and mother. I was there with Grayson, and witnessed teen boys learning to knit for over four hours straight. I witnessed teenagers lead - and even clean up - a public event with little to no direction or intervention from adults in the room.

I witnessed teaching and learning happen in an intimate, personal, way that was fueled by a simple generosity and enjoying of one another. There was an sense of ease that day which I don't usually associate with event organizing, with adolescence, or with teaching and learning.

When I tried to learn to knit years go, I was swearing up a storm and soon gave up. There are so many educational spaces where teaching and learning can feel so hard. It's so easy to feel dumb or stupid or unimportant or like a failure or like giving up. On Saturday I was reminded there is another way.

- Sarah -

Summer Work Opportunities for Alumni

2011-05-09T11:38:00.001-04:00

New Urban Arts is now accepting applications for 2 part-time summer positions dedicated to providing alumni students with summer work opportunities. These positions are contingent on available funding.

Title: Open Studio Mentor
Program: Open Studio
Positions Available: 2
Schedule: Monday through Thursday; 4:00-6:00pm
Start/End Date: July 11 - August 4, 2011
Hourly Wage: $12.00/hour

Job Description: The Open Studio Mentors support the Program Director and Studio Manager in building relationships with current and prospective students who attend Open Studio hours during summer programming. They engage high school students and alumni in developing their creative practice through introducing new media and techniques, providing instruction on use of the darkroom and silk screen studio, and encouraging students to design and implement long-term projects. They model effective use of a community based studio environment, promoting respect and responsibility for studio space and peers using the space. The Open Studio Mentors maintain a well-resourced, efficient, inclusive and values driven studio space capable of supporting a growing, self-directed learning community for young people. They strive to foster a rewarding workplace that is stimulating, trusting, and results-oriented, where the mission of New Urban Arts can thrive.

Position Requirements: These positions are designated for a graduate of New Urban Arts yearlong arts mentoring after-school program. Preference is given to candidates who were active participants as high school students over multiple years. A strong desire or interest in arts education, arts administration, teaching or community organizing is preferred but not required. Strong candidates demonstrate sustainable creative practice, leadership and communication skills, are self-motivated and work well in a rapidly changing environment. Priority is given to alumni who can demonstrate skills in darkroom photography and/or silk screen printing.

How to Apply: Please send a cover letter and resume via email or mail by Mon, June 6, 2011 to: New Urban Arts, 743 Westminster Street, Providence RI 02907, sarah@newurbanarts.org, phone: (401) 751-556. Contact New Urban Arts staff if you need guidance in writing a cover letter or resume. Alumni will be contacted for an interview in early June. Orientation training will be held in early July.

Studio Challenge

2011-04-29T17:04:00.006-04:00

It’s hard to do new things. Almost always. But sometimes it’s also pretty hard to sit around tapping your fingers against whatever surface you have been sitting at for an hour, utterly bored, thinking about all of the awesome things you could be doing (making) instead. So, you push yourself into something new. And maybe it’s difficult and you’re not sure how you feel about it at the beginning, but then something great happens.

On January 28th we decided to try something new. Way, way new: silence. We had our first ever studio-wide Challenge Day. We started by getting to know each other’s names courtesy of STAB. Next, studio alumni’s opened their own histories to new students in some intense storytelling circles. They shared their experience of crossing the street from school to our community art studio.

And then, the unprecendented happened: we were silent for one hour. And we made stuff. Amazing, beautiful, wing-beating things. Poems, drawings, secret collages that fleshed out our own wishes and thoughts in a safe space, representations of our hearts connected by twinkling lights, and we had a conversation about New Urban Arts on the wall. It was amazing.

Sure, there was a box drawn on the floor that you could talk inside and sure you could say the safe word: Marshmallow. But in that strange clipping of scissors, occasional yelps of surprise or encouragement, and murmurs of “marshmallow”, there was a sense of newness, bravery, and excitement that felt, well, the opposite of boring!

View more photos here.

We wanted to share about this first Studio Challenge Day held in the winter, because all spring it sparked plotting and planning for more Studio Challenges which are now around the corner as we say hello to start of May this weekend:

Art Crit, Wed May 4
Open Mic, Thurs May 5
Bookclub, Thursdays
How to Fair, Sat May 7 from 1-5pm (open to the public)
Spirit Day, May 11 (tentative date)
Breaking Out, Friday the 13th

Photo by Jesse Banks III
Written Reflection by artist mentor Alice Costas

We're Moving!

2011-04-29T15:01:00.005-04:00

During transitional periods, like starting college or a new job, change stirs stuff up inside us. Often changes are fast and hurried, with so much to do, but it’s important that we slow down our pace and take time with transitions. Packing for college should include resurrecting your childhood memories as you clean out your room. Starting a new job should include long lunches when you get to know your coworkers.

Even though New Urban Arts is only moving three doors down the street, from our current studio space to a permanent home next year, this transition is a chance for us to come together. As one of our alumni has said, “We can’t just throw up orange walls and call it home.”

We have convened a team of students, artist mentors, alumni and staff to facilitate a community wide celebration of 745 Westminster Street over the next 5 months which will explore notions of homemaking in a way that is playful, fun, nostalgic, personal, meaningful, memorable, creative and collaborative.

Stay tuned for invitations to participate in this historical moment at New Urban Arts from the following work groups who are currently thinking and brainstorming for lots of rituals and memory collecting to say goodbye to this space and make the new space our home including:

* Farewell Celebrations at the Art Party May 20 - the last big event taking place at 743 Westminster Street, where we have called "home" for over a decade!

* Guerrilla Marketing Campaign - to spreading the word that we're moving

* Summer Mail Art Exchange

* Ghosts of New Urban Arts Past, Present & Future

* Before and After We Move, A Photography Project

* Oral History Project - "Stories from a Generation"

* The Sentimentalists & Historians Committee is plotting a lantern processional for August and a hidden time capsule project

April 21- Breathing Praxis: Humanizing the Rhetoric of Leadership with Anna West and Michael Cirelli

2011-04-29T14:44:00.004-04:00

Notes by Julia Gualtieri

Spring Break Book Week: Printing Day with Emmy, Rob, Alice and yes, Christina the Critical

2011-04-22T23:11:00.006-04:00

Alice Costas writes the following lovely reflection about Thursday's confusing and wonderful printing day which was followed by a sustaining Conversation on Creative Practice "Breathing Praxis: Humanizing the Rhetoric of Leadership. "

So, yeah, no it was… well, you sort of had to be… wait, ok, fine, lemme tell you about Thursday. So, we printed yesterday. A lot. A three-layer 75 edition cake of juicy, rich, book covers. Rob Pecchia, local bike enthusiast and well-groomed handlebar moustache beholder came and lent his mad registration and printing skills to the project. And I was there (I’m Alice, an artist mentor, good-for-nothin’ writer hippy baker chickadee).

We started the day off with waffles (duh) courtesy of Noel, who also expressed strong opinions regarding whipped cream, but quickly moved into making ourselves into a Super! Human! Copy! Machine! with Emmy’s help. We started by illustrating images from the book, and then went crazy with carbon paper, repeating out drawings in a whirling dervish (read, circle around a table) of pressing down really hard on #2 pencils until each book (yeah, all 50!) had a custom drawing nestling inside it’s pages. We took a break to ride around in the shopping cart and peal some bananas…

And then we talked title. We had some thoughts about ovaries, and brilliant minotaurs, and maybe tea, but settled on a phrase from the book. So, the magnicifent text, the magical binding this week can crazy community building this week has been leading up to is officially titled

“You and All the Other Creatures”

At this point, I checked my brain out a little to mix inks after some group-think about gold and peacock colors for the first two layers of the silkscreen. But then I checked back in, in time to get our printing on

The title was furiously sketched out, and burnt onto an acetate along with a wonderful exquisite corpse drawing with the help of genius silkscreen banditas Bridgette, Maddie, Naomi and Molly… then, we printed them. Like, a lot of them. They were EVERYWHERE. CJ rigged up an insane chicken-wire drying rack cum jail cell for books over out library, and we got registering, pulling, flooding and printing. There were prints pinned to a bike-wheel somewhere too? And taped to the walls in the other room? Seriously, this was a whole bunch of big-thinking heads running around together to get something done. It was like watching the most delicious cake rise out of the loosest recipe, but it worked cause everyone was all about supporting each other. You know? You know. Major major thanks to Maddie, Katie, Molly, Max, CJ, Rob, and all of the many hands that dipped into the process for a little bit. After printing, we sort of trickled out of the studio and did our own thing. I can only imagine that everyone went home and had really good sun-naps, but I stuck around to see Anna West and Michael Cirrelli talk about the youth spoken word movement while surrounded by the prints we had made. And it felt full, and like we had spent the day doing this work together. And my cheeks were red and warm even though Providence had gotten cold outside by then…

-Alice Costas

Spring Break Book Week: Illustration workshop: Experience Designed and led by Andrew Oesch. Photos by Jori Ketten

2011-04-21T08:02:00.010-04:00

Andrew Oesch led us through a whirl wind process of staging, photographing and rephotographing dioramas and text to generate images for our book in the illustration workshop. Thanks Andrew for sharing your cave with us and for such a magical day of making. Thank you Jori Ketten for this beautiful photo documentation! The mystery and magic in these photos which Jori captures? Yeah... It's real!

Today... Screenprinting the covers!

Spring Break Book Week: Illustration Day!

2011-04-20T22:14:00.016-04:00

Jess Fields, current artist mentor and zinester stopped by today to help us illustrate our book in an octopus of a workshop lead by Andrew Oesch! Thanks Jess for the descriptive blog!

The day began for me shortly after Noel made breakfast. The group was gathered at a communal table, playing hand clapping games and spouting the same inside jokes I have come to love, though not necessarily understand. I was offered waffles, green bananas and something Bridgette kept calling "zombie oranges."

Then Emmy started us off with a break-in game to nimble our minds for the activity of the day. We gathered in a circle, so close our shoulders were almost touching. The game sounded simple enough. There were only two rules. "When you hear your name touch someone next to you." Cool, got it. "When you are touched say someone's name." Awesome. Easy enough to process. The game began. Emmy said "Noel." "Jori" Noel said, as he touched Divine's shoulder. "Nope! Wrong," said Emmy. She repeated the two rules. What? Wait .... what? I felt like the third implied rule was "this game is meant to make your head explode many times over." It was weird. The plot thickened. "Ok so when you mess up now," Emmy said smiling her beautiful glowy Emmy smile, "you need to die a horrible death." To give you the highlights, Divine stabbed himself in the stomach, Noel was beheaded, and Emmy's entrails fell out. I lost because I got confused and said my own name with a question mark at the end when someone tapped my shoulder. It was a little sad. I had Sherly shoot me with a musket. It gave me that warm fuzzy NUA feeling.

Then Andrew Oesch took the floor. He is a current artist mentor, past Artist Mentor Fellow, and past Artist Mentor before that. He started by having us read aloud some excerpts from The Little Prince, a favorite of mine, in which the author describes drawing an elephant being digested by a boa constrictor, first from the outside and then with an inside view. We all took time to draw our own versions of these drawings. Here's a list of what people included in their versions: bones, ribs, science diagrams, tunnels, and details.

What comes next may be difficult to read or digest. I assure you it is not half as difficult as it was to describe.

First we chose a short story from yesterday's writing exercizes. Then we highlighted the main images in it that we wanted to illustrate. We took notes on each image and what we wanted to capture in our illustration. Then we had five minutes to get up and grab 5 props each from the studio to use in our illustrations. Then we went into a ten foot tall tunnel-ish cave space which had appeared in the studio overnight. This is part of Andrew's future installation for the RISD Museum's"Big Draw" event coming up on April 30th. There photographed lines from our stories. Then we created dioramas using our props about our first image from our story. At this exact moment it

occurred to me that this project had been Oesch-ed out from under our very feet, and that we might not be returning to any concept of illustrating that I had in my head. My suspicions were confirmed as Andrew came around with a small hand held projector and helped us project our photographs of text onto our dioramas so we ... could ... photograph them...? There's that brain exploding feeling again.

But we weren't through yet! We were given sharpies and transparencies and asked to trace, expand, or accentuate certain elements of our photographs onto the transparencies. After that, the transparencies were held in front of the projector, which was projecting the photograph of the diorama with the photograph of the text over it -- you dig? Then we photographed that. I'm pretty sure at this point Divine started singing some sort of group song, the room began to spin, and blood started dripping out of my ears. I love art.

After a glass of water and a trip to the bathroom to clean the ooze from my ears, I returned to see a fuller and more complete aspect of the process. Drawing, objects, text, photos. Text as objects. Photos as text. Objects mirrored a re-mirrored. I had an epiphany. It came to me in slow motion as Andrew waved his hands in the air and said something to Noel like "gggooooooddddd nnooowwww eexxpppaaaaaannnndddd oonnnn ttttthhhhaaaaattttt ffffeeeellllliiiinnnnggg." My epiphany went as such: we are not looking at the boa constrictor from the outside, nor the inside. We are inside the elephant, seeing inside the snake, who is feeling the elephant who is reading the little prince. Pretty messed up, right? But also kind of mind boggling and prolific. In a few short hours we had created sculptures, photos and drawings -- seemlessly at once.

I then reloaded my musket and had Sherly shoot me again. Just for good measure.

Thanks Jess for participating and blogging! Thanks to Jori for being so quick to hang out and throw down with us on such a crazy technology day and giving us an initial layout for the book, to Priscilla for her grace, calm and helpfulness. Thanks Noel for continuing to make us wonderful breakfast and to keep us from finishing off the whipped cream already.

Big thanks and mad props to Andrew for bringing super huge magic cave parts, new processes for making, and a complex, technical and exciting day. I've also got double big gratitude for this dude as he spent the all day with us, then all evening artist-mentoring me in the mysteries and shortcuts of InDesign. Thanks Buddy!

Tomorrow... It's printing day!!

Spring Break Book Week: Writing Workshop

2011-04-20T07:40:00.004-04:00

Special guest writer, blogger, and dear friend, Sarah Reiter, writes in from the field to share her description and reflection of our day spent "writing the book" for our spring break week project. She also touches on some of the things that we love about New Urban Arts, but sometimes can't find words for. Thanks for naming some of the magic Sarah! (pics are on their way!).

I took time out from my usual day this Tuesday for a special event I was invited to participate in by my friend, artist and coordinator extraordinaire Emmy Bright. I could enthusiastically agree to showing up as many of my friends, fellow writers and artists from the providence community were going to be there. Also, there would be waffles!

I knew that the workshop would prove to be a welcome and invigorating challenge, as it was being moderated by none other than Walker Mettling. Walker is well known throughout Providence for his grand imaginative scheming, innate artistic talent, and hard and fast no holds barred stories events, as well as his morbid sense of humor and his ability to maintain a level of hyperactivity some medical professionals thought only five-year-olds were capable of. Knowing he would be there, as well as my friends Jay, Kate, Nik, Jorge, and Kevin made it seem like I was showing up to my own birthday party, with only one exception, teenagers!

Those of us on the outside of arts education are never quite sure how to approach dealing with dealing with the dreaded teenager. Something was obvious from the time that I showed up and was showered with hugs, served waffles, enthusiastically asked to sign a giant sign in book with a magic marker, shouted at, complimented, and showered with affection- these were no ordinary teenagers.

Noel made me waffles and gave me the secret instructions for retrieving the Nutella from it’s secret hiding place. Then we got down to the business of working off that maple syrup sugar energy with a spirited warm up game, directed by Emmy. Each of us darted about the room keeping an eye on our chosen, secret friend, and secret enemy, who suddenly switched roles, and the additional caveat of keeping our friend between us and our enemy found me broadsided and continually bombarded into the side of the large paper mache tree which graces the floor of the new urban arts studios, by noel who seemed to be keeping me there with only the use of his broad chest. I had no choice but to surrender in laughter.

Next we were organized by “tall person , short person”, but you know not really tall person, short person if you know what I mean, ( like Student, Adult, Student) and read a short story together which helped everyone understand the concept of “magical realism”, this will come back into play again as we work on our stories, as each one of the exercises was design to help us exercise our “magical realism” muscle.

Our first exercise was to write an obituary for a very unfortunate mysterious character. Some say he is a soldier, some say he’s an unhappy husband, still others say he’s a rocker who rocked his arms and legs away. Whatever happened it wasn’t pretty.

Next we all traded words left to right and right to left to write our individual takes on the objects of nature and verbs we loved the best. Throughout this and the other exercises I was really touched to hear each and every person’s individual voice in what they were doing. When you’re writing an important part of really writing the best you can is finding your voice. the adults and students together were writing like a finely tuned chorus, wherein you could hear each individual voice clearly for its perspective and together the event was a harmonious orchestration.

For the final and maybe the most confusing portion of the workshop we were asked to write five things different about the world (what if the fifth child was always killed, what if Pokeman were real, what if cigarettes made us fly?) and five customs (throwing furry animals, trading origin stories, murderous cookie carrying grand-mas on Trindad). It was hard to think of some good customs as examples at first, but eventually we worked it out.

Then after a good snack it was time for me to leave but the day carried on for our dedicated pupils as more planning for the week’s book activity was at hand. I was sorry to have to go.

Being an outsider to New Urban Arts, I am really able to see the effect that working alongside community artists has had on the students. They are respectful to themselves and each other, as well as adults. Sometimes things happen, chairs fall over, maybe someone paints with their fingers, things get spilled, but these things aren’t really bad behavior they are just things that often annoy adults. It’s great to see the effect working at New Urban Arts has had on helping the kids work without great frustration on expressing their artistic voice and listening to one another. I can’t wait to see the book and the work that the students choose to represent there. I can’t wait to see their work in the future as surely each one of these students will making amazing work in whatever mediums they chose! Not only did I get to hang out and play with writing exercise with my talented friends, but I met a new set of amazing people and I want to stay connected to with. Because I look forward to what they will do with a voracious excitement! That’s the joy of helping out at New Urban Arts. -Sarah Reiter

Thanks Sarah! Thanks Walker for designing the excellent exercizes and leading us in a super fantastic day. Thanks Jay, Nik, Kate, and Kevin for hanging out, reading, writing and running around with us. We loved having you in the studio!

Today, Wednesday, we will illustrate and layout the book. Really? In one day? Yep... Andrew Oesch will navigate us through bonkers processes and precarious territories to get there. Where? We'll know it when we walk it. More soon!

Spring Break Book Week: Field Trip to Special Collections

2011-04-19T08:14:00.021-04:00

Studio study buddy, humanities-itarian, and stab binding superstar Christina Lawrence reports from the field:

This week at New Urban Arts, while schools are on April vacation, students and artist collaborators will be writing, illustrating, printing, and binding books, culminating in the release of “Brilliant Minotaur,” a small edition of artist books, on Friday at Craftland from 7-8. To start the week, we took a trip with Delia Kovack to the Special Collections Department at the Providence Public Library, where Jordan Goffin showed us some art books from the library’s collection.

I was expecting the group to be polite but somewhat disinterested when presented with books from several hundred years ago. However, it became clear that these intricate books from the past in fact inspired a certain reverence. For some, the gold details on the book covers were memorable, while the elaborate writing or designs inside the books inspired others. Katie enjoyed the typeset in the collection, saying, “It was so tiny and intricate and wonderful.” Erin remarked on a book that came in its own ornate box. She pointed out, “It was a mystery, because you kept unwrapping it.” Sherly added, “I liked that the books showed how these people used their time and materials to make something special. I didn’t like the part where I couldn’t keep any of them.” Not only were students paying attention to the craftsmanship of the books, but they were also thinking critically about their purposes. For example, several students pointed out that it didn’t make sense to create a complicated, gold cover for a book appealing to a patron to create a house for the poor. Why not put the money spent on the book towards funding the project? When we left, people expressed interest in making appointments to return and view the collection in more detail.

For the mentors on the trip, it was magical to see this new appreciation for old objects. I was excited to see teenagers walk through a door that said “Adults Only” and start exclaiming to each other about stories in a newspaper from 1819. I’m sure this energy will continue as “Brilliant Minotaur,” whatever that may mean, takes shape this week. -C.L.

Many thanks to Delia Kovack and Jordan Goffin for sharing your worlds with us! And to Priscilla, Christina, CJ, and all the New Urban Arts family for an all around wonderful day. And Noel, thank you for cooking us all breakfast. The waffles were delicious.

Today, Tuesday, we write the book!

And once we finish the book? Not only are we having a release party at Craftland, joining the gallery exhibition "Magic Child Repository", but also, Jordan Goffin wants one for the Providence Public Library Special Collections!

We're Moving!

2011-04-13T16:38:00.007-04:00

New Urban Arts is excited to announce we have purchased 705 Westminster St., a one-story, 4,000 square-foot storefront property. We're excited to have found a great facility with double the square footage we have now, only 100 feet from our current location!

With your help, we look forward to transforming this vacant building into a space as welcoming, inclusive and inspiring as the home we've been building at New Urban Arts in the last 14 years.

We plan to move in Fall 2011. A Transition Team of alumni, mentors, and students will be organizing many creative projects this summer. Stay tuned for updates on this transition and ways you can be involved.

In the meantime, save the date for our last major event in our current studio space, our annual Art Party on Friday, May 20. Free and Open to the Public.

April 7 Conversation "Who Made Us Creative?" On People, Power and Place in Providence

2011-04-13T16:35:00.005-04:00

A conversation facilitated by WorkCited unpacking the story of development of “Creative Providence” with Community Music Works, the Steel Yard, As220 & New Urban Arts:

Notes by Jess Fields

March 31 Converastion On the Role of Youth Voice and the Arts in Education Reform

2011-04-13T16:29:00.003-04:00

A conversation facilitated by Jason Yoon on the critical roles that creativity, the arts and youth voice have to play in transforming American education for the better with New Urban Arts alumni, CJ Jimenez, Aneudy Alba and Ashley Escobedo.

Notes by Caitlin Cali

Conversations on Creative Practice Poster

2011-04-11T09:25:00.004-04:00

Ian Cozzens of Secret Door Projects wrote a lovely piece about the process of printing the poster for our 2011 Conversations on Creative Practice series. Ian was a screen printing mentor at New Urban Arts for several years, and he continues to help out with special projects at the studio, and is an unwavering support and teacher for me and printing projects. He himself makes beautiful prints, teaches around the country, supports artists and community building around town, gardens, bikes, and is an enthusiast for the good work happening. One of my first friends in Providence, he continues to be one of my favorite people to work with and learn from.

Check out his gorgeous work, thoughtful words, and prints for sale on his website:
http://www.secretdoorprojects.org

Thanks Ian for capturing us in our inkiest moments! That video is wonderful. And thanks to the many many other folks who helped make the poster too! Kedrin Frias, Walker Mettling, Andrew Oesch, Taylor, Katie, Justin, Noel, Bridgette, Carolina 'CJ', & Shadow. So much awesomeness.

Feed FLiP

2011-04-06T22:59:00.005-04:00

FLiP is our annual zine. Every spring a collection box sits in our studio for students, mentors and alumni to contribute drawings, writings, photographs and other submissions to go in our annual publication which is released at the Art Party in May.

Every year the submission box takes on a new look. In the past its been a giant robot, an electrical switch, a nintendo (FLiPtendo), an iPod, a coin... and this year Herny has worked with admirable intensity on constructing a Kedrin!

You feed FLiP by feeding Kedrin submissions of artwork. His mouth opens... he's a starving artist! And you can "flip" his glasses once you submit work, since his hair is made of velcro. Notice his uniform- Kedrin is a fan of comic books, and is very much a super hero at New Urban Arts.

Youth Voice, Creativity, Education Reform

2011-03-30T09:58:00.003-04:00

From Facebook's Mark Zuckerberbg's 100 million dollar gift to the Newark Public schools, to the rapid expansion of charter schools to policy interventions like Race to the Top, education equity has attracted perhaps unprecedented mainstream media attention. Unfortunately, absent from our national dialogue are the critical roles that creativity, the arts and youth voice have to play in transforming American education for the better. New Urban Arts' Executive Director Jason Yoon, a former elementary school art teacher, museum educator and New Urban Arts artist mentor, will explore this further in conversation with Carolina Jimenez, Ashley Escobedo and Aneudy Alba. Carolina will also be doing an artist talk.

Light Food will be provided.

About the conversationalists:

Aneudy Alba is a student alumni of youth programs at College Visions, New Urban Arts and Providence ¡CityArts! for Youth. He is currently serving as an AmeriCorps Teaching Artist with Providence ¡CityArts! for Youth working at Roger Williams Middle School doing in-school and after school arts program. Prior to this, Aneudy served as a Senior Corps Member at CityYear Rhode Island and as the chair of the Studio Team Advisory Board (STAB), New Urban Arts' youth and alumni leadership council.

Ashley Escobedo: Born and raised in Providence Rhode Island, Ashley is a college student at Guilford College in Greensboro North Carolina. Currently she is attending New York University for a domestic study aboard trying to find a balance between art and activism. Ashley is a poet, photographer and Bonner scholar. She is on the planning committee of Free Minds Free People, an education conference taking place in Providence RI in July 2011. She is also the co-founder of an after-school arts program at Guilford aimed at the children of migrant workers. With several other New Urban Arts graduates, Ashley also co-launched An Urban Classic Poetry Collective, an online poetry project.

Carolina Jimenez is the Chair of New Urban Arts' Studio Team Advisory Board and currently spending her post-graduation year pursuing her interest in organic and sustainable farming techniques at Farmacy Herbs in Providence, R.I. and Sandy Beach Farm in Cumberland, R.I. She plans to attend college to study art and ecology in the upcoming school year. As the chair of STAB, Carolina has represented New Urban Arts at local and national conferences on topics ranging from the arts, education and after-school. She is trying to be the trouble she wants to see in the world.

Wish I Had a Place Like This When I Was Growing Up: New Urban Arts and the Cultivation of Creative Practice By Peter Hocking

2011-03-16T14:39:00.006-04:00

Founding Board Chair, Alumni Fellow and Community Story Teller, Peter Hocking has an article published in the latest issue of Radical Teacher. The following is an edited excerpt from Radical Teacher, Number 89, Winter 2010, pp. 47-56.

You may not notice it when you first enter New Urban Arts’ studio, but just above your head and to the right of the door, stenciled in dusty orange paint—resembling more the detritus of an abandoned art project than creed—are the core principles of the studio: risk, leadership, inclusion, connection, voice. They are flanked, on one side, by a white wall that serves alternatively as a gallery space and site of art making and, on the other, by a neatly presented collection of a dozen black and white student portraits, created annually by a photography mentor.

In the space of less than ten feet, the studio tells a story. Walking into the space invites more stories and, importantly, encourages participation in the crafting of the next story.

In September 2009, New Urban Arts convened its first reunion of artist mentors. The group was eager to discuss both their experience with the program and how they were continuing to learn to situate their art practice in the world. Deep into the reunion one of them observed that New Urban Arts had saved his education.

Though what he said came as no surprise, the vigor of the murmurs and nods around the circle forced me to reassess what was being communicated. As others spoke to this point, I realized that, as a RISD alumnus, I was reflexively nodding with deep understanding. The conversation highlighted the ways that we were yearning not for yet another prescriptive determination of what it means to be an artist or designer in the tradition of the industrialized, Modernist art and design economy, but a broader inquiry into how creative people might situate themselves in a rapidly transforming world.

It was clear that the sense of connectedness and meaning that these mentors experienced at New Urban Arts was not something they had encountered in other places. New Urban Arts allowed them to understand creative practice as something that can engage a plurality of participants and facilitators who enable a reciprocal and dialogical learning process. This conversation helped me recognize what enables this learning community to form: safety to take risks, presence to the totality of those who inhabit the space, and a deep ownership of the value of the place.

New Urban Arts teaches us that the making of aesthetic experience, the making of meaning, the making of social change, the making of progressive sites of teaching and learning, and the making of justice need not be fragmented or disjointed activities. They can be the same thing.

The Genesis of Possible Worlds

2011-03-14T16:05:00.004-04:00

This weekend, I enjoyed a great day with New Urban Arts Mentors and staff at the mid year retreat. What an incredible room of people, and heartful voices, I'm telling you. Towards the end of the day, we played around with some drawing, brainstorming, and this quote from Eleanor Duckworth:

Having confidence in one's ideas does not mean "I know my ideas are right." It means; "I am willing to try my ideas out."

I wanted to share this video where the artist Callie Curry aka 'Swoon' shares her thinking about her work. Because I think it speaks to the kind of place that New Urban Arts seeks to be, the kind of work that we, as artists, are particularly suited to for.

It is an elegant articulation of an approach to artmaking which is inspired by a place of frustration & hardship, but does not remain there. It's work which says "I don't accept this as an inevitable outcome" and instead the artist and the work acts to inspire wonder. It acts to surprise and subvert.

While Swoon's work is of a particular and public nature, I believe the actual work can be in any number of forms. To me this video is about trying out wonderful ideas, shifting paradigms with magic, working to expand possibilities to be infinite. It reminds me of the work that we do, of the work that we can do.

I look forward to all we do and will do.

- Emmy

Spring 2011 Conversations Series

2011-03-08T12:34:00.004-05:00

Organized and curated by Arts Mentoring Fellows, Emmy Bright and Kedrin Frias, New Urban Arts is excited to announce the Spring 2011 Conversation Series on Creative Practice. The fourth annual series of public Conversations will be held on Thursdays in March and April from 7:00-9:00pm at our community art studio, 743 Westminster Street in Providence. Free and Open to the Public.

March 31: The Role of Youth Voice and Creativity in Education Reform
From Facebook's Mark Zuckerberbg's 100 million dollar gift to the Newark Public schools, to the rapid expansion of charter schools to policy interventions like Race to the Top, education equity has attracted perhaps unprecedented mainstream media attention. Unfortunately, absent from our national dialogue are the critical roles that creativity, the arts and youth voice have to play in transforming American education for the better. Executive Director Jason Yoon, a former elementary school art teacher, museum educator and New Urban Arts artist mentor, will explore this further in conversation with Carolina Jimenez and other New Urban Arts alumni. Carolina is the Chair of New Urban Arts' Studio Team Advisory Board and currently spending her post-graduation year pursuing her interest in organic and sustainable farming techniques at Farmacy Herbs in Providence, R.I. and Sandy Beach Farm in Cumberland, R.I. She hopes to attend College of the Atlantic to study art and ecology in the upcoming school year.

April 7: People, Place, and Power in Providence
Over the last ten years, the work of artists, activists and scholars in Providence has been incorporated into a rhetoric of “creative city building.” Join a conversation funded in part by the Rhode Island Council For the Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, with founders and current leaders from AS220, New Urban Arts, Community MusicWorks, and the Steel Yard. Address questions of organizational origin stories, place-making, access to resources, relationships to powerful institutions and visioning.

April 14: Dance as Activism
A conversation and workshop with Paloma MacGregor, dancer, choreographer and educator from New York, has toured internationally for five years with the critically acclaimed Urban Bush Women dance company, and is currenty dancing in with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and Burnt Sugar/DANZ collective. She co-founded Angela's Pulse, a collaborative performing arts company, with her sister, director Patricia McGregor. The world premier of Blood Dazzler, their latest work, had a sold-out run at Harlem Stage in September 2010. Paloma is currently developing Building a Better Fishtrap, a project about water, memory and home.

April 21: Breathing Praxis: Humanizing the Rhetoric of Leadership
A conversation with Anna West and Michael Cirelli, poets and educators at the front of the youth led spoken word movement share their understandings of what makes a space generative for teens. They also describe their personal leadership strategies for organizing communities of writers. Anna West is founder of WordPlay, a spoken word programming in Baton Rouge, LA, co-founder of Louder Than a Bomb in Chicago, the largest teen poetry festival of its kind in the country, and currently is a candidate for M.Ed in Arts in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Michael Cirelli is the Executive Director of Urban Word NYC, director of the Annual Spoken Word & Hip-Hop Teacher & Community Leader Training Institute at the University of Wisconsin, author of the award-winning teaching guide, Hip-Hop Poetry & the Classics and recently published a book of poems about MTV’s The Jersey Shore.

Collecting Sandra Olson Award Nominations

2011-03-01T20:52:00.004-05:00

We are now collecting Sandra Olson award nominations. New Urban Arts introduced this annual award in 2002 to recognize individuals and organizations who demonstrate extraordinary commitment to New Urban Arts. Board members, staff, artist mentors and students can nominate candidates, people who share extraordinary contributions of time, expertise, money, energy or support—often without solicitation—going beyond what is asked of them in support of New Urban Arts and its mission.

New Urban Arts has grouped the candidates as follows:
1. Individual Volunteers: board members, volunteers, consultants, etc.
2. Organizations & Businesses: corporations, small businesses, foundations, community organizations
3. Full-time staff, artist mentors, students, and/or alumni

Each year, New Urban Arts gives a Sandra Olson Award to one individual or organization in each category. Under special circumstances as determined by the review panel, more than one Sandra Olson Award in each category may be given.
Awards will be given at the Annual Campaign Event, May 12, 2011.

Sandra Olson Award Nominations are due Monday March 9 to me, jason@newurbanarts.org

Subject "Sandra Olson Award"

How do I nominate a candidate for a Sandra Olson Award?
Please submit the following:
· Name and category (see above) for the candidate you are nominating;
· Your name;
· The reasons why you are nominating this candidate;
· Additional information that the review panel should know.

Nominations will be kept anonymous.

Who are past winners of the Sandra Olson Awards?
2002 - Peter Hocking, Jephry Floral Studio, Marly Louis, Echoing Green Foundation
2003 – Kathleen Connolly, Jason Yoon, Gasbarro’s Wines
2004 – Jesse Banks III, White Electric, Craftland
2005 – Michael Fournier, Kedrin Frias, Jennifer Rice, Cornish Associates
2006 – Priscilla Carrion, White Whale Web Services, Tamara Kaplan, Judy Vilmain
2007- John Tabor Jacobson, Mary Adewusi, Esther Chak, Simon Moore, Jack Richter
2008 - Sarah Meyer, Myrth York, Aneudy Alba, Andrew Oesch

2009 – Deborah Obalil, Mathias Arling, Vilmain Inc., Erik Gould

2010 – Rosalia Velis, Angelo Manioudakis, Andy Cutler

Sense ‘o’ Self

2010-12-15T09:06:00.005-05:00

Sense ‘o’ Self

I don’t know who I am. I’ve been trying to find out for 17 years. I have all the little pieces. Right here together in my pouch. I just don’t have time to put them together. And when I start, I find a new piece. Then I crumble everything and start up again.

Bridgette L., New Urban Arts Student.

This was number five of the ten stories that Bridgette read in front of an audience of about 200 people at 100 Very Short Stories, a benefit for the PCL Comics Consortium.

Artsgiving!

2010-11-24T17:19:00.005-05:00

Last night, we had Artsgiving, an annual event where every person in the studio takes a name out of a hat and spends an hour making a gift for that person in the studio. Last night we had 65 youth, artists and even alums participate. At the end, we sit in a (very) big circle and everyone shares what they received and finds out who made their gift. It's a really important community building event in the studio and a chance, especially for new students-who are often finding their way around our studio-to get to know other students and mentors.

Rob Macinnis, a photo artist mentor, made a time-lapse video of the night--it's a great representation of what the event was-really an amazing night of artmaking and connection and relationship building.

Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at New Urban Arts!

Artography Convening

2010-11-06T15:39:00.006-04:00

I spent last week in El Paso TX (from the littlest big of Rhody to the biggest continental big of Texas!) at the second annual Artography convening. New Urban Arts is very proud to be one of nine arts organizations across the country recognized by LINC and the Ford Foundation for exemplary artistic practice and community responsiveness. I attended with an amazing team from our studio: Arts Mentoring Fellows Emmy Bright and Kedrin Frias and youth alumnus and STAB chair CJ. Kedrin shared some of the work we did with our inaugural Institute of Other Significant Pursuits, our three-day leadership institute dedicated to supporting alumni artist mentors working to apply what they learned at New Urban Arts in diverse “other significant pursuits.” Emmy shared our contribution to the X-treme Studio exhibition at Columbia College in Chicago and CJ shared her piece from the 2010 Art Party and discussed the independent study she is currently pursuing post high-school. It was inspiring to have the chance to learn and share with our peers.

You can read more about the program here. These are some of my (scattered) notes from the convening and workshops. By no means is this an exhaustive record or documentation of the convening, this is only some of the pearls of wisdom I remembered to jot down during the conversations and workshops and that I am taking away as I continue to do this work.

Feel free to comment or correct (or demand to be credited for your quotes!). If this is on facebook, I tagged you for feedback/comments and very likely because I [mis]quoted you. If this is on the blog, comment away please.

Big, big thanks to the entire staff at Leveraging Investments in Creativity, the Artography documentation team, the Ford Foundation, and everyone at La Mujer Obrera for putting this together and hosting us. Thank you to our peer organizations in the 2009 Artography cohort for your inspiring work.

Thanks and enjoy,

Jason

Border Identities Panel

"Identity” is an academic term, if you strip it away, its about your grandfather, it’s personal, it’s about your stories. What foods do you eat, what are your memories? The stories that humanize who we are.

Are you Mexican or American?

We are contributing to the American identity. Of course America is Latino!

What are those values that make us Mexican, and how do we make that Mexican American?

I have danced in every night-club in Waikiki for tourists, but I have never compromised our cultural traditions.

Storytelling Workshop with CityLore

When you make films about pop culture, its easy/dangerous to get whoever’s famous, how hard do you want to work to get a complete story? And w/people not used to being interviewed-they need to be led a little bit more. . [but their contributions and stories can be richer and more insightful!]

We do long-term projects in long-term relationships with a community. The secret of this is relationships and trust.

How do you tell a collective story?

Not just tell the story through the really famous people, the really “camera-ready” people. There are thousands of people and thousands of ways that people have contributed to mambo and hip-hop. [reference to the documentary From Mambo to Hip Hop]

On interviewing: “you want it to feel like a conversation but you want to do most of the listening.”

We’re making all kinds of decisions when we tell someone else’s stories-its an important responsibility. The feedback piece is a big one doing community storytelling. “Here’s what I heard-is there something I missed, misinterpreted…?”

Space for Change. Arts Spaces and Community Development.

“Cultural kitchens in communities” are a central part of what a community is supposed to have.

[We focus so much on bringing people together but not enough on giving people home space, “kitchens” to conduct/express their culture/evolve it. It’s one thing to have diverse potlucks but the quality and depth and richness of what people bring to the multi-cultural potluck will be stronger if we invest in cultural kitchens where people can make and experiment with the dishes they are going to bring.]

Our physical space is an embodiment of our values. Sometimes those values are explicitly stated, in other cases we know them organically.

We are not going into communities saying “we have what you need”.

Doing work in the community, we consider home to be the foundation for doing work anywhere else.”

Our values are on the wall. Someone scratched into a desk “we got wings”, [our space] is very welcoming to young people, very accessible, very malleable space. The space transforms for and by young people.

Kids are attached to tradition, whether we give them credit for it or not.

So much of our work is creating the container anywhere we are…how do we build on the strengths we have to build a [our own] safe space, a creative space?

It is important to take an asset-based approach to arts-centered community development. Your space, everything from location, to colors, to layout, to your culture and attitude can encourage participation or discourage it. We are not about the service-delivery model of art and culture. Our participants don’t come to our organizations to “receive” culture from us, but come to be participants, authors of their own stories, cultural “producers”. Space can make that real or not.

Reflection from an Artist Mentor

2010-09-27T13:05:00.001-04:00

When I started as a mentor at New Urban Arts, I came through the doors thinking that this is a place focused on youth voice, creativity, and empowerment. And it is. But it took me a while to realize that it's more than that. It's not just a place for the students - it's a place for me, too.

As a new artist mentor, I approached this volunteer position as a way to give - I'm teaching, I'm contributing, I'm here for the students. I think a lot of volunteers don't want to seem selfish, so they don't think about or dwell on what's in it for them. I came in for my mentoring hours, taught projects, and watched students build their sewing skills.

One day, I came in and I was in a funk. My student, Stephanie, immediately sensed that something was different and asked me what was going on. I hesitated, wondering if I should "go there" with her - if I should tell her about how I was struggling with figuring out what path I should take in making my art into a business. I decided to try it out - I told her what was going through my head. She listened, and we had a great chat that ultimately helped me take a step back and gain the perspective that I needed to move forward.

That interaction was an "aha" moment for me. Because I realized that it wasn't a selfish conversation but rather exactly the kind of thing that should be happening at New Urban Arts.

New Urban Arts has a commitment to not only high school students, but emerging artists, too. We're part of the mission. The mentoring fellows, staff, and students are here to support us, converse with us, and help us grow in our creative practices. It is truly a community of learning where you are always both a teacher and a learner at once. I've realized that making it not just about the students' work, but mine as well, is not a selfish thing. When I bring my whole self to New Urban Arts as an educator, artist, and person, I'm ready to both contribute and take in. And the community is richer for it.

- Carole Ann Penney

What We Make, We Make Together: A Reflection by Alumni Artist Mentor Zachary Clark

2010-09-02T16:55:00.003-04:00

I’m invested in this notion that we are makers and that this is a good place to start. And on the other side of this singular acknowledgment – that we are, without exception, all makers – is a vague but persistent idea about community, about transformation, about significance. This is the first and fundamental belief. I start with this.

We should adventure, in some ways collective and otherwise alone. My grandmother lived on an acre of untamed land, dense and twisting and thrilling, where I would explore as a child. I think that I was an artist then. In crafting my own idea about what it means to be an artist, I cannot ever seem to divorce the notion of making from my romantic and long-held ideas about exploring. They are bound, merged, and I no longer seek to separate them.

My role as a maker exists in relation to the makings of others. There are projects crafted by my peers that I claim as partly mine, and works emerged from my own hands of which others claim ownership. This is right. I collaborate. And in that shared experience of creating, I find a familiar adventure – as if we’re climbing and unearthing, sunburned. My practice feels distinctly physical in this way, even when it’s not. Sometimes, especially when it’s not.

I think that beauty emerges from this pursuit, but that beauty is relative. I think that change is often born, but that change is not always obvious. I don’t propose a solution to individuals outside myself through my own practice, but I commit myself to helping them develop their own. I exist alongside my collaborators, not before or behind. This may be the most important facet of my practice, and for this reason I’m committed to its survival.

The following statement was written by alumni artist mentor Zachary Clark (2008-09) who participated in the first ever Institute of Other Significant Pursuits at New Urban Arts this past weekend.

Zachary Clark is now in Charlotte, North Carolina, working as an outreach artist through Freedom Schools and is the Outreach Coordinator at the Cabarrus Arts Council. He also teaches monthly painting classes on a farm in the rural Piedmont of North Carolina.

This statement was written in a reflective session after three intensive days of skill building workshops, discussion, and artmaking among nine alumni artist mentors from five states across the country. The Institute of Other Significant Pursuits is a new initiative at New Urban Arts dedicated to supporting the work of alumni artist mentors beyond the walls of our studio at 743 Westminster Street in Providence, RI.

Stay tuned to learn more about the Institute of Other Significant Pursuits and ways that alumni artist mentors from New Urban Arts are contributing to a wider conversation about contemporary community arts practices.

Become An Artist Mentor at New Urban Arts

2010-08-09T17:39:00.002-04:00

“I first came to the studio to share what I know
about making comics. Now it feels like a second home.
I have a new understanding of what it means to be a creative person.”
Melissa Mendes, Artist Mentor, 2006-2008

Each September, New Urban Arts selects 20 Artist Mentors to participate in our interdisciplinary art studio on Westminster Street, across from Classical and Central High schools. Artist Mentors volunteer to mentor high school students in developing a creative practice they can sustain throughout their lives. Arts mentoring at New Urban Arts is a wonderful opportunity for artists and educators to learn how to effectively work with high school students in a community setting.

In the past, Artist Mentors have been high school students, college students, graduate students, and artists from the community. Because New Urban Arts emphasizes peer-to-peer and participatory learning in our studio, Artist Mentors must be able to connect on a personal and artistic level with teenagers.

Artist Mentors are nurturing, resourceful, flexible under pressure, open to taking risks, willing to learn, and able to commit 6 hours per week during an entire school year. Artist Mentors participate in a yearlong professional development program to support their growth as an artist and educator and are required to attend two weekend retreats held in Fall and Winter.

We also offer Artist Mentor positions through off-site work-study programs for eligible university students. Work-study students also have work responsibilities that include an additional four hours per week.

This year, New Urban Arts is looking for artist mentors in the following disciplines: drawing, painting, fashion design, sewing, printmaking, screen printing, sculpture, installation, film/animation, graphic design, web design, song writing, music, sound recording, radio, painting, drawing, poetry, mixed media, spoken word performance, digital and darkroom photography, art therapy, dance, yoga, mixed media, bookmaking and textiles. We are not limited to these media and are open to accommodate other media in our studio.

2010-11 Artist Mentor Applications now available at www.newurbanarts.org. To have an application mailed to you, please contact New Urban Arts at 401.751.4556 or info@newurbanarts.org.

Applications are due September 13, 2010.

For more information, visit our Mentor Open House on Wednesday September 8, 2010 from 5-6pm at New Urban Arts. Learn about the artist mentor selection process,
get a tour of our interdisciplinary art studio, meet New Urban Arts staff and pick up
a mentor application just in time before the deadline.

Poets In Public Places visit our studio

2010-07-26T17:05:00.001-04:00

On Thursday July 22, New Urban Arts received a special visit from Poets in Public Places a project of Sound Session 2010. Spoken word performances and a Q&A panel was followed by poetry writing workshops and a “slam experience” featuring our students' writings.

Below is a piece written and performed that day after a workshop with Regie Gibson where he introduced his poem Godholler and kennings, a literary devise that acts as a compressed form of metaphor where an object is described in a two-word phrase.

Thank you to all the poets who visited our studio, including Christopher Johnson, Indigo Bethea, Marlon Carey, Maximus Parthus and Regie Gibson!!

Thoughtwalk
By Legend Lowell

Noun. A walk in which a thought takes form when a person takes time from the shallow depths of life to escape into another land. When I take my thick black sweater into the summer night and escape with the boy whom took my heart and my mind wanders onto the street. The origin which began when people discovered the emotion of failure and walked with themselves as their thoughts exploded into fire. Verb. To walk and let your mind collect ideas and emotion. As in when a young girl of eight disappears into the night and becomes one with the inner workings of her mind. Noun. A want in the back of a teenage girl’s head as she writes a poem.

Learning and Curiosity

2010-06-24T18:26:00.007-04:00

CJ's statement and her piece (come see it in person on the corner of Dean and Westminster St!) illustrates better than I ever could in word and image why places like New Urban Arts need to exist.

Please consider a gift to our 2010 Annual Campaign before June 30!

from the archive...

2010-06-18T13:30:00.004-04:00

Dear Providence,

Remember that summer, way back in 2008, when we wrote you all those letters? Dear Providence, we said, I adore you. I'd just like to thank you for being my home. We told you jokes like, how many artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? What do you mean you don't remember the answer? Were you even reading our letters?! OK, fine. The answer is three.

We confided in you when we told you that in Providence I found love, and I lost it. We're sorry about that time we called you predictable, but no hard feelings, what we treasure most is that you've shown us Life (even if you never did replace the traffic lights downtown with a roundabout). The point is that we saved all of our letters. Yes, all of them (that's how important you are to us Providence).

But you weren't our first muse. Sorry, we just thought you should know. We've been doing mail art at NUA since 2002. Back then we would send our art and letters back and forth to each other...and we saved all of that too. If you can remember who sent us these floating baby heads, could you let us know?

Oh and by the way, we posted all our letters to you here: http://dearprovidence.org/ Maybe you'd like to look at them again? Just get yourself a box of tissues.

With love,

New Urban Arts

from the archive...

2010-06-07T10:59:00.005-04:00

There are TONS of photos in the archive too – photos of NUA events, random days in the studio, and lots of fabulous artwork. While I was going through them this collage scrap surfaced...kinda sums it all up, doesn't it?

from the archive...

2010-06-04T15:21:00.008-04:00

Letterpress napkins with quotes from students, handprinted (yes, one by one) by Tamara for NUA's first annual campaign event in 2002.

Watch Out for Spiders!

2010-06-02T11:01:00.005-04:00

Hi, I'm Jane. I'm an alumni mentor here at NUA. This summer I'm rolling up my sleeves on a number of projects in the studio, the first of which is cleaning out NUA's attic – otherwise known as that space on top of the supply closet that you can only get to with a really tall ladder...or as the place where Jesse hides the snacks (sorry Jesse, hope that wasn't a secret).

Attics are tricky places. We throw our stuff up there and tell ourselves we'll sort through it later, but it's easy to forget about. Before you know it, your attic is FULL! In NUA's case, this means less room for snacks. And I think we'd all agree that making more room for snacks is a good thing.

So what's in NUA's attic? Loads of stuff from our 10+ year history – artwork, writing, photographs, back issues of FLiP, and more. This month I'll be bringing everything down and taking a look. I bet we'll find some treasures, and when we do, I'll post them here. I may also ask for your help in piecing together stories from NUA's past. Yesterday, Amanda solved a mystery about this photo journal. In it was a photograph of her cats Brittany and Gizmo that she took her very first year at NUA! She helped us figure out what year the book was made (and we also learned a little something about her cats in the process).

This is going to be fun.

On Writing with Walker Mettling and Jenn Morea

2010-05-25T19:45:00.002-04:00

Join Us Wednesday, May 26th at 7pm for our final Conversation on Creative Practice with Walker Mettling and Jenn Morea: On Writing

It's the finale of the 2010 Conversation on Creative Practice series with awesome guests Walker Mettling and Jenn Morea. It's going to be a Story Night extraordinaire and a conversation that promises to be dynamic and illuminating.

About the conversationalists:

Walker is a writer and performer and independent curator in Providence. He has assembled writers, wallflowers, musicians and drawers into a number of Story Nights around this town and other ones and has also taught writing and bookmaking at 826 Valencia in San Francisco. He is a chef for a vegan restaurant project and is currently compiling several publication projects in collaboration with other writers, drawers, printers, and the USPS.

Jenn Morea is a poet, writer, and educator. She has worked as a teaching artist in the Chicago Public Schools since 1996 and has edited more than twenty-five anthologies of writing by Chicago youth, including dream in yourself (Tia Chucha Press, 1997). Jenn teaches with Project AIM at the Center for Arts Partnerships/Columbia College Chicago and with Young Chicago Authors. Her poems may be found in the online journals High Chair, Slope and Wicked Alice. She is currently at work on a number of writing projects while researching an exquisite and mysterious underground flower.

Walker and Jenn will lead the group in writing exercises both tiny and gigantic. We will get to try on their writing practices and see how the world looks from there. We will also get to work and play with an amazing helping cast of musicians, illustrators and food makers including Art Middleton, Mickey Zacchilli, Amil Byleckie and Karen, the Vegan Ice Cream Truck Lady as well as others. We will follow with a conversation between all in attendance. We hope that you will be there to help make it the best night so far.

Conversations on Creative Practice take place at New Urban Arts, 743 Westminster Street Providence, RI 02903. Events are free and open to the public. The Conversations Series is curated and hosted by Arts Mentoring Fellows, Emmy Bright and Kedrin Frias.

*New Urban Arts Conversations on Creative Practice Series is made possible through support from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rhode Island Foundation, and the RISD Office of Public Engagement.*

Illustrations and Zines by Graduating Senior, Emely

2010-05-21T17:09:00.012-04:00

Whenever I talked about my years at New Urban Arts, I always seemed to focus on how much I loved the studio, the people, etc. and how big of an impact being there all of these years has had on me. I pretty much gush about how awesome N.U.A is. But have I ever stopped to think about how it's affected me as an artist?

Well, it never really did until now (in case you were wondering). During my freshman year at Feinstein High school and first year in the studio, I was devoted to all things manga and anime-related. I was stubborn; refusing to try new styles that were outside of the box I had become so fond of.

But, when I was here, something changed. Maybe it's something in the air at N.U.A. or some sort of magical magnet built under the studio's floorboards that attracts such awesome people. They [students, mentors, and staff!] were all so nice, welcoming and encouraging (and not to mention talented).

Because of them, I felt inspired to try and experiment more.

I began with comics, then watercolor, and self-publishing. I began to love sequential arts, painting, storytelling, book-making, zines, cartoons, comics, animation, screen-printing, and I yearned to find a way to blend those together.

To this day, I continue to try to find a middle ground between my love of manga style and my infatuation with cartoon style. It's been like that for like... a year?

With me, things were usually 'either...or': either manga or cartoons (and for a while between my sophomore and junior year, I was on an uber cartoon mix and manga began to disappear...or so I thought.). I could never fully shake the manga off. But who says that's a bad thing? I don't.

I enjoy the challenge and the possibilities of experimenting to find a happy medium between the two. I feel like this exploration made me mature. I was willing to accept that, yes, I was changing but I was also willing to roll with those changes and continue to expand my creative horizons. It's weird writing this, looking back on what I used to be and what I am, (reliving that very, VERY awkward phase of my life would be a nightmare!). It's kind of eerie. But...it kind of warms my heart at the same time, thinking about how I’ve grown here, all the awesome people I’ve met here, all of the memories made here; it's amazing.

That feeling of amazement/love/encouragement/etc. is what fuels me and inspires me continually. The thought of making all of those people who had made me feel that and had done so much for me feel that way by looking at something I made really drives me. I know I still have a ways to go as an artist and reach that goal, but looking back, I feel like I’m on the right track to getting to see that.

So thanks dudes, for the awesome four years. You have no idea how much I’ll miss this place. How much I’ll miss each and every single friend I’ve made here. I could write for the rest of my life and it wouldn't begin to describe how grateful I am to you. N.U.A.....thank you.

I know this isn't a 'good bye' (I’ve been reassured time and time again this week that I’ll be back (which is true because I can't imagine myself without this place)) but a 'see you again soon'.

Things won't end here, they'll just be different. I’m stoked to be going to Hampshire this September, I’m excited to be graduating from high school soon (FINALLY!), and I’m glad to be writing this. This here, right now. This is my last artist statement as a high school student/ N.U.A. student.

Emely Barroso

Then it was my turn...

2010-05-14T18:49:00.002-04:00

So, after listening to everyones various tributes, I was invited onto the stage to tribute a graduating senior...to tribute a friend. It is a strange moment to be thrust into... There is a tension between the task of conveying to the audience how incredible and inspiring this person is and communicating to this individual how much they have impacted your life.

It is a humbling honor.

Fragments of Mentor Tributes from their Students...

2010-05-14T18:10:00.004-04:00

My mentor helped me pursue my dreams...
He is a chill person...
She is kind of spunky...
Always encouraging me to read my poems out-loud even when I don't want to...
My mentor is really humble...
On friday's the studio is quiet and we talk, I really like that...
I thank her for spending time with me working on my portfolio...
They are someone I can truly count on...
My mentor is like a mad scientist...
She gives me unconditional support...
He thinks what I say is funny, I look forward to seeing her in the studio...
It is always good to come by and catch up even when we are not drawing...
She is uplifting and encouraging...
My mentor is a cool local designer...
After working with him I saw improvement in my artwork...
She opened me up to more options...
I look up to the way she talks to people...
My mentor is like one of us....

Difficult to Describe

2010-05-14T17:27:00.002-04:00

I find myself totally struggling to even take in the fullness of the Art Party... in previous years I have solely been here as a participant in the spectacle... and now I am tasked with trying to convey to you dear readers the amazing onslaught that is the annual Art Party. Considered me daunted by the responsibility. You should know, you would be immersed in the pride and happiness is oozing throughout the studio.

How do I begin to capture everything that is going on? It is all going on at once... Ever other person who walks through the door is smothered in hugs, People are being dragged around the room to see photos, assemblages, drawings, sculptures... Secretly little last minute touches are still being applied under the cover of the exuberant chaos. Comprehending these simultaneous moments is... well splendid, energizing and comforting.

Art Party 2010

2010-05-14T17:12:00.001-04:00

Hello, Hello... the clouds have lifted and it is a glorious Friday afternoon. Tis 5:12 and already the studio is bustling with visitors to this years Art party.

Summer Employment Opportunities for Alumni

2010-05-11T15:01:00.003-04:00

New Urban Arts is now accepting applications for part-time summer positions dedicated to providing alumni students with summer work opportunities. These positions are contingent on available funding.

Job Title: Open Studio Mentor
Program: Open Studio
Schedule: Monday through Thursday; 4:00-7:00pm
Start/End Date: July 12 - August 12, 2010
Hourly Wage: $12/hour

Job Description: The Open Studio Mentors support the Summer Studio Coordinator and Studio Manager in building relationships with current and prospective students who attend Open Studio hours during summer programming. They engage high school students in developing their creative practice through introducing new media and techniques, providing instruction on use of the darkroom and silk screen studio, and encouraging students to design and implement long-term projects. They model effective use of a community based studio environment, promoting respect and responsibility for studio space and peers using the space. They build relationships with youth participants, responding to the diversity of backgrounds and experiences of our students. The Open Studio Mentors maintain a well-resourced, efficient, inclusive and values driven studio space capable of supporting a growing, self-directed learning community for young people. They strive to foster a rewarding workplace that is stimulating, trusting, and results-oriented, where the mission of New Urban Arts can thrive.
Position Requirements: These positions are designated for a graduate of New Urban Arts yearlong arts mentoring after-school program. Preference is given to candidates who were active participants as high school students over multiple years. A strong desire or interest in arts education, arts administration, teaching or community organizing is preferred but not required. Strong candidates demonstrate sustainable creative practice, leadership and communication skills, are self-motivated and work well in a rapidly changing environment. Priority is given to alumni who can demonstrate skills in darkroom photography and/or silk screen printing.

How to Apply: Please send a cover letter and resume via email or mail by Friday, May 28 to: New Urban Arts, 743 Westminster Street, Providence RI 02907, sarah@newurbanarts.org, phone: (401) 751-556. Alumni will be contacted for an interview in early June. Orientation training will be held in late June.

Roots & Rituals: A Creative Day for Creative People

2010-05-11T11:35:00.002-04:00

Come support and participate in a youth-planned, cross-organizational arts day: "Roots & Rituals: A Creative Day for Creative People."

Young people from the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative (New Urban Arts, AS220 Broad Street Studios, Community MusicWorks, the Carriage House, and Providence ¡CityArts! for Youth) have joined forces to organize the first-ever youth arts day at AS220, generously sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts!

Join us for this FREE collaborative arts and media day where you can make cool stuff, learn about local youth arts organizations, and see expressive performances. Don't leave your personality at home, bring your SKILLZ, experience different art practices in workshops, or just hang out. There will be an open mic – show us what you got! Get ready for a day you won't soon forget! You will have an awesome time!

Saturday, May 22
12:00-5:00
Located at AS220, 115 Empire St

FREE and open to the public

doors at 11:30
workshops 12-2
performances 3-5

For more information, contact Jori Ketten
jori@communitymusicworks.org

Creative Conversation: On Deep Connection

2010-05-03T10:55:00.004-04:00

Wed. May 5th, 7PM at New Urban Arts.

We hope you’ll join us for our upcoming workshop and Conversation on Creative Practice: On Deep Connection with theater director and educator Ellie Heyman. Ellie has directed plays in Chicago, LA, Boston, New York, and most recently, her play Diventare was honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and I am so excited to bring her to Providence. For the past many years, she has also taught and raised younger people as part of Northwestern University’s National High School Institute for Theater Arts. She comes to us from BU’s Theater Conservatory where she is achieving her MFA while educating actors in ways of embodied knowing, emotional connection, and play making from that place.

“Connection” is one of New Urban Arts five core values. In connecting with a mentor, we believe that we can become our best selves, and these connections happen in all kinds of iterations between students, mentors, staff, our friends, and larger communities. Contrary to the Romantic notion of the artist at work alone in a studio, deep connection can be an important part of a rich creative practice. Our stories are about personal and artistic transformations grown from connections amongst people and in this space. And there is a certain morality in this way of thinking; even extending out from the studio and into wider living. I think finding and fostering these authentic connections allows us to be more open, more fully in love with the world, with our work in it, and with each other.

Ellie’s practice is about helping performers connect deeply with themselves and with each other, such that their experience resounds with an audience and out into their world. She approaches her work with an ethos of embodied connection, a love for the physical, a yen for the imaginary, and a trust in the gut sense of emotion. She describes one of her plays unfolding, being always rewritten in the process, “In the beginning, it didn’t make a lot of intellectual sense at all - but it followed a kind of heart logic. So these actors, you couldn’t talk about it; there was nothing really to talk about! You had to do the scene to do it! And each time we returned from doing it, we had more information about it.” This idea of “heart logic” and doing it, really doing it, in order to discover “it” really resonates with me. I think Ellie articulates a kind of faith involved in doing work from emotional and not-knowing places in our selves, in our creative practices, in our relational practices, and perhaps in any of our learning endeavors.

I hope you will join us for an evening workshop and word-swap on Wednesday, May 5, 7PM at New Urban Arts. Since we will be working from heart logic, and gut places, Ellie will first lead a workshop around movement and connection where we will all “Do it, really do it, in order to know it.” So its not just talking, but moving too. From there, we can put our heads back together and talk about these practices. What is it like to move and work from these embodied places? How we can build safe containers for ourselves and others to play with emotions? How might these practices translate from theater to other disciplines, and to our practice as people in the world? And even better, we will spend time with the questions that you bring and that you discover. And also because we are made of our own bodies, I promise wonderful snacks. At least some home made, either crafted in a Secret Kitchen or perhaps my own unnamed one. I hope, very much, to see you, speak with you, and connect with you, on Wednesday evening.

Farewell

2010-04-24T06:02:00.002-04:00

Well fellow readers, it seems we must part ways. I must say that I greatly regret not ever going to a lock-in before, and waiting until I became an alum to attend. Still, it was unlike any other overnight event I've ever experienced and in the span of one night it has felt like a whole vacation. We all gathered in a circle and received cute little gifts to commend our strength for holding out so long. This has definitely been a memorable experience and I hope NUA continues this tradition for generations to come. If you are reading this and have never participated in one, I strongly encourage you to volunteer, or if you are a student please come next year! Thanks for sticking around with me and I hope this has been insightful.

Much love,

Andrew Migliori

5:00 AM

2010-04-24T04:59:00.002-04:00

It's the 11 hour mark! Wowwwwww it has been an alternately slow and fast night, and the last hour is embraced with both relief and a tinge of sadness. The energy that has been exchanged among us is something only this studio can produce and is not something that can be easily let go. At the same time, all our eyelids are heavy as hell. I personally have been up for almost 24 hours at this point and could do with a good set of z's.

2010-04-24T03:17:00.000-04:00

"...its only gonna get weirder from here." -Caitlin Cali

An Interview with Sarah Meyer

2010-04-24T02:22:00.002-04:00

Sarah has been an integral part of the NUA community since she joined in the early 2000s. The first lock-in took place during her first year here, so at this point in her career she has seen her fair share of overnight events. She had several thoughts and stories to share when she sat down with me.

S: "I remember [Maria and Rosa] were like, 'Can we do a lock-in?' and I was like, 'I dunno, what does it mean to do a lock-in?' I didn't know if they would sleep here or do activities all night. They kind of put together the structure of the different rules, the schedule, that there would be no sleeping, just art-making all night long. I talked to Tyler and Tamara about how some kids wanted to do a lock-in, where they would do art all night, and they told me I was crazy. But they didn't say that it was impossible, that we couldn't do it, so I turned to the students to help put it together. Then the next year, kids came back saying that they wanted to do the lock-in again, and every year the students looked forward to it so there's a different group of students each year that help make it happen.

How has the lock-in changed since it started?

S: "At first, we didn't really know how much food to get, how long workshops should last: they used to be three hours and they would start to lose steam and the kids would get more tired, so we learned we had to keep things going at a quicker pace. The first lock-in we had only three mentors: me, Jesse, and Kedrin, and I knew from there that we needed a lot more mentors."

After some discussion, Sarah and I determined that lock-ins seem to go by so fast and the students stay up so easily because they all feed off of each other's energy. It's almost like it's a group challenge to stay up and we're all working together to stay enthusiastic and positive and alert.

Sarah also made a lot of mention of the notion of "play" with regards to why lock-ins are so successful. Some of the activities are so simple and loose, such as bubble art or maskmaking, that we just revert to our inherent playful nature. It is a nice break from the more conceptual art many of us are used to and it is in part due to this relaxed atmosphere that lock-ins are such a blast! So we have Sarah to thank as well for pushing the original students forward to creating this great annual tradition.

An Interview with Maria and Rosa

2010-04-24T01:35:00.003-04:00

Maria and Rosa are among the many alumni who came here tonight to volunteer. But that's not all! Maria and Rosa are credited with STARTING the annual NUA Lock-In! I figured it would be pretty relevant to sit down and talk with them in their off-time.

Why is there a lock-in in the first place?

R: "Honestly, we were thinking about being [in the studio] all day. They close the studio at seven, and we were thinking, why couldn't we be there any longer? They said it was because no one would stay here, but we knew people would want to stay."

M: "Yeah, after seven we have nothing to do at all. We were thinking that we should stay here overnight!"

R: "We told Tyler the next day and he apparently said that people had been wanting to do a lock-in but we never really thought anyone would do it. So we took it in our hands to do it. We were kinda iffy about people actually signing up."

The first lock-in turned out to be a hit.

R: "Staying overnight is more exciting! We got the concept because [Maria] used to do stuff like that for her church, so we brought the idea here."

What kind of stuff did you do in your first lock-in?

M: "My favorite was the mosaic!"

R: "Yeah we had someone come in and break dishes and stuff and it was really fun.

M: "...egg dyeing..."

R: "That was around the time that Tyler's wife was pregnant, so we had Pin the Baby on Tyler! We also had a scavenger hunt at the beginning."

That's right, that wonderful scavenger hunt that kicked us off is no new feature for the lock-in.

Were you guys able to sleep at all the first time?

M and R: "NO!"

This great tradition is still going strong and these two women are proud to have it as part of their legacy. Rosa even travelled all the way from New York THIS EVENING to take part in her own special NUA event. This event creates a sense of community and it is this humble reporter's hope that the NUA Lock-In goes on for all time.

Just Getting Started

2010-04-24T01:27:00.002-04:00

We were running a little over 1 o'clock before Jadrian called everyone to attention to get the next workshops a-rollin'. Now we've got people making pocket shrines, altered clothes and surprise balls. Gooooood stuff!

A Soldier's Courage

2010-04-24T00:48:00.002-04:00

Just arriving at this time of night is one of the Cali sisters, Cristin. This brave soul volunteered her time, starting at 1 AM, even though she had just had her wisdom teeth removed yesterday! Poor Cristin was not put under during surgery and "felt like Gollum being tortured in Lord of the Rings." After going through such an intense and traumatic experience, she still found the time to spend time here with all the wonderful students. What a trooper!

Happy Midnight!!!

2010-04-24T00:07:00.002-04:00

We have reached the halfway point! Jesse's sirens called for the all activity to stop, and some techno beats came over the speakers. We were then treated to a wonderful fashion show led by Karrie which can be seen on our Facebook page. Then, with the remaining time we counted down to midnight, when a great number of very loud balloons were released into the air, in conjunction with Kevin on the conga drums. Now I watch as Jason teaches dancing, Kevin has a jam session, and Alice makes moustaches!

Hour 4

2010-04-23T22:59:00.002-04:00

Over the past hour, more mentors and volunteers (including a few old alumni) have been arriving as we move into the second 4 hour block! Some people have left but with that more came in. We have reached the point where the doors have been locked so it is officially a LOCK-IN. To my left, a group of students are chilling out and watching Up, and to my right, students are crocheting and design tattoos to screenprint. The activity just goes to show the diversity and creativity abounding between these walls!

Hour 3

2010-04-23T21:41:00.002-04:00

10 o' clock is approaching faster than we expected! Interestingly enough, once DDR was broken out, the studio was calmer than it had been earlier. Two tables of Bananagrams competitions were set up and others hit the snack tables. An intense Championship for DDR was held and now that it's over, things are quiteting down.

Or so I thought.

It seems this time of night is ripe for breaking out the speakers and having an "acoustic DDR rematch." This should be interesting.

2010-04-23T21:22:00.001-04:00

Legend: "What time is it?"

Sarah: "9:21."

Legend: "I don't want this to end!"

2010-04-23T20:36:00.000-04:00

"YOU'RE ON FIRE!!!!" -Stephanie across the studio to the DDR participants

Hour 2

2010-04-23T20:05:00.002-04:00

The past hour has been a great start with Bubble Art, Balloon Candles, Blanket-making, and Monster drawing! Check out our Facebook page to see some demos of the workshops.

Jesse came parading in with tons of Subway sandwiches that were easily destroyed within minutes.

The crowd of students and mentors continues to grow and get restless as we watch a couple of YMCA volunteers set up a big portable Dance Dance Revolution area.

The Scavenger Hunt

2010-04-23T18:51:00.003-04:00

While the studio began to fill up with more students, volunteers, and mentors, three brave mentors grouped the present students into teams to set out into Providence and embark on a scavenger hunt. I tagged along with a team (aptly dubbed Team Awesome) to feel the energy of the group. Team Awesome was comprised of:

-Artist mentor Caitlin Saharek

-Emely

-Katelyn

-Sara

-Jackson

-Noel

The scavenger hunt was created by another student, Kimchua, and had teams looking for such diverse items as the "Signature of someone with an N, U and A in their name (not from someone at the lock-in)" or simply a paper clip.

Immediately after the countdown, Team Awesome headed out the door amidst cheers from our very own Jason Yoon. It was a hectic rush as the team decided which direction to go, seeing as they only had 20 minutes to complete their task. I served as the trusty time counter, giving live updates on how much longer we had. The sun was beginning to go down and the beautiful sky light kept us pumped.

Along the way, I talked with Jackson, a senior at Classical High School, and a member of the Studio Team Advisory Board. When asked why he was interested in spending twelve art-filled hours at New Urban arts, he replied that it was an obvious choice because of all of the "new things" he knew he would be learning and trying out. This is Jackson's second year participating in the Lock-In and he feels quite confident that he can keep up with the activities all through the night, as he did last year. If he is in danger of falling asleep, he has his good pal Kimchua to keep him awake.

Sadly, Team Awesome was not the victor of the event, but that wasn't the point in the slightest! Well, maybe a little bit. But still, it was a fun bonding experience and a good insight into what this whole crazy festival has to offer.

Introducing: Andrew Migliori

2010-04-23T18:19:00.002-04:00

Greetings fellow followers! My name is Andrew Migliori, a NUA alum and current freshman at RISD. I have been assigned the wonderful yet arduous task of documenting the 2010 NUA Lock-In! Stay tuned here, on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/newurbanarts) and on Twitter (http://twitter.com/newurbanarts) for updates as I tell tales and document the magical night that is THE LOCK-IN.

xoxo Andrew

Jason's remarks at the 2010 Annual Campaign

2010-04-20T19:41:00.002-04:00

Thank you Emely. [I followed Emely]

What Emely is too modest to tell you, is that on top of all of the amazing work she has done here starting new programs, events, and making amazing artwork, she has been accepted to nearly every college she has applied to - with scholarship offers from Hampshire, Salem, Guilford and URI!

Thank you for coming tonight. I want to start with some acknowledgments. --- I ask that you hold your applause until I’m done.

The young people that were here are from STAB, our studio team advisory board. This group of incredible young leaders mentor their peers, organize events, reach out to the public and much more. I hope you had a chance to talk one of them tonight.
Our artist mentors. These amazing volunteers make an incredible commitment to our youth. They practice the most sophisticated and transformative kind of education, teaching in partnership WITH young people not TO them.
This organization is actually led by an incredible team that is the staff here. They have saved me more times than I can count. Sarah, Tamara, Jesse, Emmy, Kedrin and our newest staff member, Dan. And our studio assistants, Michelle and Shannon.
Our board of directors. These community leaders balance multiple commitments and voluntarily take full responsibility for our work and survival. I particularly want to acknowledge our chair, Myrth York.
Our event committee has spent the last two months planning this night. Mike, Sally, Rebecca, Zach and Derek.
Our silent auction team, Tamara, Holly and Priscilla!
All the volunteers that transformed our studio into the White House!

And now let’s say thank you to them all with a big round of applause.

Please look at the program for our event sponsors, these generous businesses keep our fundraising costs low-this means more of your donations go directly to young people.Citizens Bank, Neighborhood Health Plan of RI and GTECH have been very generous sponsors of this event and New Urban Arts.

We've had a lot of visitors recently. Funders, public servants, researchers, people trying to learn what makes this place “tick.” They will usually sit down with a group of young people here and ask them what is significant to them about this place. And even though we don't tell young people what to say, there is incredible similarity across what I hear.

One young woman said something last week that summed it up really well. She said:

“My sense of....what's possible...has changed here...

This is one of the only places in my life where I'm told that things ARE possible, NOT impossible.”

We're talking a lot as a nation about education inequality. Some of our most passionate and talented minds are addressing this persistent problem. What do we do?

Longer school days? Longer school years?

More testing? Less testing? Better testing?

Uniforms, standard curriculums?

There are NO easy answers.

But what we do know is this: a young person's sense of what's possible for their lives, communities and their world MUST be our foundation.

Education inequality, at its core is about more than just being denied access to money and material resources (though they are important, we can always use more here..!), ultimately it is about who is encouraged to believe what is possible and who isn't.

There may be no greater injustice that we can inflict on another human than to silence their sense of possibility. But we systemically do it every single day. We do it by cutting our arts programs to the bone, by denying young people a say in how they learn, in the countless subtle and not so subtle messages that tell young people what they can and cant do.

I'm pretty sure that somewhere along the way in your life, someone or someone’s told you that things were possible. You took those first steps and risked what one of our past artist mentors calls “glorious failure.”

This is what New Urban Arts does for over hundreds of young people every year. This is the change you're making happen.

We've gotten some great recognition in the last year and it's been really exciting. We have the opportunity to share what we've been doing with new communities, and go out and learn from some other amazing folks across the nation and even the world.

But it doesn't change the fact that we still need your help now, and year in and year out to keep these doors open.

Ten years ago, we launched our first annual campaign so we could effectively fight for “the possible” for our youth, independent of the changing whims and agendas of big institutions and the powers that be.

We still need your help.

If you've already given THANK YOU (feel free to give again!)

To make a donation to our annual campaign please complete donation card and leave it in our donation box. If you don’t have your cc or your checkbook, we will gladly take a pledge and follow up with you.

Please, lets keep telling young people that what they dream is possible.

Thank you.

Words shared from a graduating senior at last night's annual campaign event

2010-04-16T20:12:00.002-04:00

Hi, my name is Emely Barroso. I am a senior at Feinstein High School and have been coming to New Urban Arts for four years. Throughout these four years, I’ve been involved with their comics, watercolor and self-publishing programs, and have participated in their summer program for two years. My passions are storytelling, sequential arts, and painting. Last year, I started a Zine Team at my high school and last Saturday, with New Urban Arts, organized a city-wide Zine Fair here in the studio. I am graduating this June and am planning on going to college to pursue a degree in visual arts or illustration.

Before I stepped through the doors of New Urban Arts, I was always the type of person who apologized frequently (sometimes unnecessarily too). Maybe it’s because I was also the type of person who didn’t like the person they were; someone who didn’t think others liked that person either; someone who felt just their presence was a burden to be around.

So when did it all change? When did I stop hanging my head down in shame and holding it up with pride and self-worth? When did I stop being afraid of being around others and start feeling comfortable around them? When did “maybe you shouldn’t” get replaced with “you totally should”?

When did others around me stop saying “you shouldn’t apologize so much” or “stop being so sorry; it’s ok” and start saying “wow, that’s great! You should totally go for that” and “I’m so happy for you, Em”?

All of that changed because of New Urban Arts.

Walking in that first day with my little yellow folder of drawings, I was petrified to no end at what the people would be like, and ultimately shocked at how nice and welcoming Sarah M., the first person I met here, was and is. So through New Urban Arts, I feel like a lot has changed. I’ve changed.

It feels like all those sob stories I used to peddle have become a love story with New Urban Arts; like my whole life, I’ve been watching an underdog story and it feels like now, I’m really rooting for a hero.

Through this place, this amazing wonderful place, my sorry’s became thank yous.
Thank you’s for the mentors and the students. Thank you’s for the memories and the friends I’ve made here.

Thanks for making my high school experience something worth telling. Thank you for being patient and giving me the room to become who I am today. Thank you for giving me a future I’m really excited about. Thank you for letting me thank you and for being here day after day.

Thank you, NUA.

Thank you.

From the Perspective of an Artist Mentor

2010-04-16T18:04:00.002-04:00

Hi, I’m Sarah Greenfield. I’m a new mentor this year for sculpture, though anybody who’s worked with me can tell you that pretty much anything goes at my table. Over the past year my students and I have sewn stuffed animals, experimented with paper mache and clay, drawn, painted and even organized a giant collaborative ocean installation in the front window. The only time I really feel like the “sculpture” mentor is when somebody comes to me with questions or looking for advice on working in 3D, and even then, it’s likely I’ll have no clue either and we’ll end up learning together---that’s my favorite.

I’m going to do my best to tell you how much this place means to me, personally, what it’s changed for me. To use this year’s own particularly meaningful language, I’m going to try to tell you how I’m taller, and why.

When I applied to be a mentor last summer, after a lot of gentle but firm encouragement from my best friend, former mentor Lane Taplin, it was partly because I knew I needed some help. That may sound strange or seem like it goes against the idea of a mentor as someone who is a primarily a giver rather than a receiver of support, but it’s something I’m actually proud that I recognized back then---I think because I’d seen firsthand the incredibly positive effects this studio had on Lane.

Last summer, I was in the middle of an intense burn out---I had just graduated from RISD with no job, no plans, no idea where I wanted to go or how on earth I was going to get there. I was terrified, confused and angry that even though art school had taught me more than I ever thought possible, it had also made me realize that a career in commercial art was the last thing I wanted. When I walked into New Urban Arts for the first time, I hadn’t made art in months.

I had heard that this was a place where art was self-driven, expressive, community-based and most importantly, fun. I needed to see that, to be a part of that, to remind myself why I chose to create in the first place. I needed to be with people for whom art was essential, playful, a way to transcend and transform.

I remembered what art had been to me when I was in high school. I wanted to share the knowledge and skills I’d learned, all the enthusiasm and support I could give, in exchange for just being able to see that passion and drive that I was lacking, to be in the same room as someone who couldn’t stop making art, and not because there was a deadline looming.

So okay, I knew (or at least had a really strong feeling) that being a mentor at New Urban Arts was going to help me heal my art block. I had no idea it would change everything else. I didn’t know how much I’d fall in love with the students here, how much they would impress me with their compassion, their talent, their commitment, how much it would mean to me to be invited into such an important part of their lives.

I didn’t know that the other mentors, the staff and the fellows would be so supportive of me, so willing to lend a hand or an ear or a shoulder whenever I needed it---which was kind of a lot, especially in the beginning when we all barely knew each other and I couldn’t stop worrying about whether or not I was doing this “right.” I didn’t know that at some point during this year I would really stop worrying, that my students would become my friends and this studio would start feeling like home to me, like family.

I didn’t know I’d discover that nothing makes me happier than seeing the excitement and pride on the face of a student who’s showing me something she made herself, something she learned with my help or encouragement, hearing her say “I can do this.” I think that’s been inside me my whole life, that joy that comes from teaching, from sharing---I could always see it in my mother and my grandmother, both lifelong teachers, but now I can see it in myself too and I owe that to this studio.

New Urban Arts has given me both the experience I needed to realize that I want to teach art, and the support and resources I now need to pursue that goal. I want to say thank you by continuing what was started here, by carrying this experience with me and trying my hardest to give it to others.

And oh, by the way, I’m making art again. And I love it. Most of all I love making it here, with my students, my friends.

So what is New Urban Arts to me?

It’s a small table covered in paper, scattered with markers, surrounded by laughter, where we learn during a giant game of drawing war that hot sauce defeats a kraken.

It’s an expedition to the darkest recesses of the basement---never finding exactly what we’re looking for but always returning with something else, a new idea, and the seeds of new friendships born out of a shared adventure.

It’s an ocean overflowing the front window with spontaneous mixed-media collaborations, proudly displaying our diversity, our talent, our ridiculous sense of humor.

It’s knowing that every time I walk in the door, I will be smiled at, I will be hugged, someone will want to sit down and talk to me, someone will want to show me something they made, and someone will want to make something---with me.

It’s that excitement, that trust, that sharing of what’s most important in our lives---our art, ourselves---that defines this studio for me, that’s made me so much taller this year, tall enough to see over the top of my fears and my doubts to what’s right there in front of me. My future.

Announcing Our 2010 Sandra Olson Award Winners

2010-04-14T15:04:00.005-04:00

Thank you to all of you who submitted your incredibly passionate and thoughtful nominations for the Sandra Olson Awards.

It is one of my favorite times of the year because I get to read about all the different contributions people are making to making New Urban Arts what it is. It is also one of the most difficult times of the year because there are nominations for so many different people, which is a sign to me of how much everyone here gives above and beyond what is expected of them!

But after careful conversations and thought of the event committee, three honorees in each of the three categories became pretty clear. I want to share with you the 2010 Sandra Olson award winners! The quotes are excerpts from their nominations.

--Jason Yoon, Executive Director

SANDRA OLSON WINNERS
Individual staff, student, alumni category: Rosalia Velis, Alumnus
“She has put her best foot forward with much grace this year, but for many years she has cared for the studio and the people in it. She reaches deep inside herself for us and keeps reaching.”

Volunteer category: Angelo Manioudakis, Board Treasurer, Finance Committee Chair
“New Urban Arts is in a sound and stable position because of his work in the last six years. He has consistently given time and leadership far above and beyond what would be expected of any nonprofit board member.”

Business/organization category: Andy Cutler, Cutler & Company
“Andy Cutler essentially volunteered enough hours to be considered a New Urban Arts PR staff person during the months leading up to the Coming Up Taller ceremony! He is dedicated to the creative and entrepreneurial energy of all young people in Providence.”

cutlerandcompany.com

About the Sandra Olson Awards: New Urban Arts introduced the Sandra Olson Awards in 2002 to recognize individuals and organizations that demonstrate extraordinary commitment to New Urban Arts.Extraordinary contributions of time, expertise, money, energy, or support – often given without solicitation- qualify recipients. The award also honors Sandra Olson, who once mailed New Urban Arts a $2 check each week over the course of two years. Her gifts totaled over $250.

Past winners are:
2002 - Peter Hocking, Jephry Floral Studio, Marly Louis, Echoing Green Foundation
2003 – Kathleen Connolly, Jason Yoon, Gasbarro’s Wines
2004 – Jesse Banks III, White Electric, Craftland
2005 – Michael Fournier, Kedrin Frias, Jennifer Rice, Cornish Associates
2006 – Priscilla Carrion, White Whale Web Services, Tamara Kaplan, Judy Vilmain
2007- John Tabor Jacobson, Mary Adewusi, Esther Chak, Simon Moore, Jack Richter
2008 - Sarah Meyer, Myrth York, Aneudy Alba, Andrew Oesch

2009 – Deborah Obalil, Mathias Arling, Vilmain Inc., Erik Gould

Congratulations Rosalia, Angelo and Andy! We are so grateful for all of your work!

Making sense of Fort Day

2010-03-31T23:09:00.008-04:00

New Urban Arts is an amazing place. duh.

That's why I work here, it's why I freaking up and moved here. Almost every day here is, as cheesy as it sounds, filled with an atmosphere of love and magic that despite the many amazing places I have worked, I have not found too often. Any of you that know me personally, know that these aren't words that I just throw around in my every day conversation.

But there was something especially incredible about Fort Day that I'm trying to figure out.

Looking at these pictures again gives me goosebumps. It was part of spirit week, organized by Noel, a New Urban Arts students who's high school doesn't have a spirit week so he launched one in our studio. It's always a funny thing when youth and artists in our studio adopt/adapt traditions and rituals associated with larger more traditional institutions (churches, public high schools etc etc) that in many ways, New Urban Arts exists in opposition to/protest of (or at the very least to model alternative practices for those institutions). I think of this adoption as forms of subversive acts. We've done this with our all-night art lock-in, which is something I've always associated with church and youth groups and many of the religious traditions I've personally chosen to walk away from. Our first lock-in was actually proposed by a young person who had been active in her church and wanted New Urban Arts to do our version of a lock-in. It's now grown into a giant youth-led/organized annual tradition that youth look forward to every year. A lock-in with no Jesus our saving of souls.

So we had our version of spirit week, which was a great week, Food day, mentor day, stuffed animal day, it was all great. But something clicked especially well for folks on Fort Day and I can't put my finger on it but here is my first try at it:

Fearlessness. Pure, unadulterated, gleefull, joyful creation with no barriers, fears or pressure. No fancy supplies needed, everyone just grabbed whatever crap (and we have a lot of crap) that was lying around in the studio and from our basement and just started building, tying, and stacking. Like a jazz improvisation or a latin descarga everyone just started building, responding to one other organically and these bizarre but beautiful structures gradually materialized in the middle of the studio. And as chaotic as the process was, there was still something poetic and seamless about how things started to materialize at the same time. I really can't put words around it. All I heard was laughter. People's eyes were lit up in ways even more than usual here. Look at the pictures...

A chance to revert back to our most basic childhood impulses. Tearing cushions off our couches, stacking branches in the park, tying bedsheets together, how many of our first creative experiences may have just been stacking crap in our house as small children and crawling through them? Who teaches us to do that? We just did it. To relive that in our studio, which is essentially a giant art clubhouse, is like reliving that early childhood experience but on steroids.

A very basic universal human impulse is being triggered here, the need, impulse to build shelter but in a creative artistic context? Where does shelter fall in Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Where does the need to make "art?" Are they anywhere near each other? Maybe there is something here in his interaction (contradiction?) when the pure basic functionality of shelter is crossed with the beautifully absurdist/dadaist exercise of making forts from scraps at New Urban Arts?

I don't maybe it was some of those things, all of those things, none of those things. Anyone that was there, I really would love your thoughts.

All I know is that I'm pretty sure something special happened that day and I'm still trying to figure out how to put words to it...

On Organizing for Creative Practice

2010-03-18T19:20:00.003-04:00

We hope you will join us for our upcoming Conversation on Creative Practice. Wednesday 3/24 at 7pm at New Urban Arts 743 Westminster.

Abigail Satinsky of InCUBATE (www.incubate-chicago.org) will moderate a conversation on Organizing for Creative Practice. Other discussers will include several fine folks of Building 16 (Dan Schleifer, Susan Sakash & Tatyana Yanishevsky), and I hope you will come to talk about the various projects you're organizing towards, or wistfully daydreaming about.

More and more, I'm convinced that creative practice is literally world making, and there are lots of different ways to make the world. This morning, I encountered folks making breakfast for friends, others making a window installation, another deinstalling hundreds of portraits, and someone writing a play about sticks. I'm scribbling notes about making things with teenagers and finishing another lantern. There is hope embedded in all of these acts. And I think the hope is that our inner and outer worlds shift or vibrate differently and also, probably, that someone else's world vibrates with us - even a little bit.

So that's a tiny bit on making, but what are the structures and resources that help these people, these ideas, and this work, to enter the world? How do we work with current institutions, in spaces between institutions, and also invent our own spaces as need be in back yards, attics, or alongside a riverbed? Where do we find the people, time, and funds to build the worlds that we want to see? And with all of this dreamy stuff, what are some barriers and how might we renavigate or dismantle them?

That's what we're talking about on Wednesday, and I am so pleased to have both Abigail Satinsky from InCUBATE and fine folks of Building 16 speak with us about how they've worked around and inside of these questions. InCUBATE acts as curators, researchers and co-producers of artists' projects both in Chicago and nationally. Building 16 operates a studio space, gathering place, and performance venue (by donation) for local and national artists. And your voices will be welcome additions in this and all of our Conversations on Creative Practice.

Oh! And there will be snacks. Possibly very special ones. Looking forward to seeing you and yours. Its free. Its at 7. March 24th. Wednesday. At our very favorite New Urban Arts.

Please do spread the word.