Tag Archives: Gold Coast Arts Center

With Innovative Classes, Workshops Long Island’s Gold Coast Arts Center Illuminates Dark Winter With Art, Music, Theater, Film

December 6, 2020 krubin723

Ellen Schiff, Director of School for the Arts, brought her art class outdoors during summer; the Gold Coast Arts Center has found ways to continue to offer in-person and virtual art classes this winter © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

by Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

There is no better antidote to the cold dark winter that is upon us than filling the season and one’s soul with art, music, theater, film. People are turning COVID-19 isolation into an opportunity to broaden skills, discovering new talents and exploring new interests. And the Gold Coast Arts Center, a regional nonprofit multi-arts organization dedicated to promoting the arts through education, exhibition, performance, and outreach, is adapting its programs to the new reality, which in an interesting twist, has enabled the center to expand its reach well beyond the Long Island community.

Winter 2021 School registration is starting next week (Dec. 10) for classes starting in January. The arts organization has been able to continue to offer about two-thirds of its catalog by adapting programs – some virtual, some still in-person in the arts center’s studios.

“Our focus for Winter 2021 as it relates to school is FLEXIBILITY,” says Julie Wostenholme, Marketing & Development Director, for the arts center. “During these difficult times of Covid and with a second wave looming, our school team has proven itself to be a highly trusted resource and a dedicated concierge service to students and families. We’ve evolved with the times by offering more options.”

These include innovative programs such as:

· Virtual, Hybrid & In-Person classes.

· Multi-session classes, One-Day workshops, Pop-Up classes & Create Your Own classes.

· Host a Holiday Art, Dance or Chess Party with Family & Friends

· Private lessons in all disciplines.

· Film / Art Combo Series – first session is a film on Claude Monet, paired with a Monet themed painting class (this series is sponsored by HSBC in Great Neck).

· A new focus on adult classes, workshops.

Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck, Long Island, is finding new ways to deliver classes, workshops and programs during the COVID-19 crisis © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

One of the adaptations is that instead of offering programs that extend from winter into spring, because people are not comfortable committing to longer programs, most of the courses are divided into eight-session segments, but for specific classes, when you sign up for the winter session, you will be sent a promotional discount for signing up for spring session at same time.

Even its renowned film festival and year-round cinema series, which were reintroduced last May, is in high gear, continuing to bring the best of independent new films with its at-home screenings. The series continues to offer two to three new films a month, partnering with film distributors (a 50-50 split in the ticket price). You click to buy a virtual ticket ($10-12 per film) and have 48-72 hours to watch once you purchase. And you still have access to the hallmark of the center’s film festivals: special Q&As with directors and people connected with the film, as well as the ability to link to film reviews and critiques. (Tickets can be purchased for individual films, rather than a whole series.)

The Gold Coast Arts Center’s cinema series is renowned for bringing in important people connected with the film. Dr. Ruth Westheimer participated in a Q&A after the 2019 screening of the documentary, “Ask Dr. Ruth.” This year, the center is adapting the cinema series to present Q&As with directors and film “kits” to enhance at-home screenings of specially curated films © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The center’s cinema series films are now accompanied by “film kits,” so that in addition to seeing movies that have been specially curated, movie-goers can also enjoy a GCIFF Film Team Selection Review as well as Director Statements, Q&As and any other specialized collateral materials made especially for the arts center. “This is a highly competitive market so we are trying to make the film experience with us a very well-rounded one,” Wostenholme says.

On view now: Ric Burns’ documentary “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life”; “Conviction” a French courtroom thriller based on a true story (French with subtitles); and “Saul & Ruby’s Holocaust Survivor Band,” a musical documentary about finding purpose and meaning in life at any age, the transcendent power of music, and the importance of speaking out against anti-Semitism and bigotry, featuring an exclusive Q&A with director Tod Lending.

Gold Coast Arts Center Dance Festival. The arts center has found a way to continue to teach dance (c) Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Virtual, Hybrid & In-Person classes are offered spanning age groups, from 4 years old to teens and adults as well as family programs, and across a huge array of “the arts” – art, dance, music, theater, even robotics two virtual classes: for beginners, an intro to robotics, and programming, physics of robotics targeted to intermediate & advanced) and chess – a program that the center has offered for years, but with the “Queens Gambit” craze, now offers two new virtual chess classes. “People called to create their own chess class.”

“We have kept up a robust program. We’re not offering everything, but we continue to offer the most successful, innovative and popular programs, well thought out to accommodate the times.”

Indeed, one of the innovations is to “create your own pod” – customized class. People can propose a class to Ellen Schiff, Director of School for the Arts, and the arts center will arrange a teacher. The class can be customized and personalized for time, interest and competency level.

Another innovation are one-day adult workshops, which do not require a commitment beyond signing up in advance. One of these new workshops is a “film & art” series –combining two disciplines: participants see a documentary of an artist’s exhibition and life on screen, which is then linked to a one-day painting class at the arts center (the elements can be purchased separately or as a combo).

The January 7, “Adult Painting & Film” immersive workshop is focused on the life of Claude Monet and his most beloved paintings. “Watch how his art developed as the film, Exhibition on Screen: I, Claude Monet features his gardens at Giverny, and the series of paintings they inspired. Students will recreate their own rendition of The Bridge with the lively strokes that Monet used in this live in-person workshop.” No experience is required and the supplies are provided (sessions limited to 8).

The center is hoping to offer one of these Adult Painting & Film workshops per month.

For programs that are offered in the arts center’s own building on Middle Neck Road in Great Neck, strict guidelines and protocols are maintained for anyone coming into the center to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of students, teachers, staff – socially distancing; only the students and program participants are allowed in; grids mark off six-feet separation; masks must be worn at all times, the center has a filtration system and keeps windows open where appropriate.

Even virtual classes, taught online, are organized so the supplies are provided – people drive to the arts center and pick them up curbside.

For example, an Adult Virtual Pastel Art Workshop is a 90-minute-session with an instructor, offered on January 24 (no experience necessary; supplies are included and can be picked up at the arts center; limited to 8 students).

Instructors like Jude Amsel who teaches ceramics, solar printing and curates the Gold Coast Art Center’s gallery exhibits, have found innovative ways of presenting classes and workshops © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The arts center is also offering “pop-up classes” – one day workshops, for example in ceramics (artist Jude Amsel is offering a holiday ceramics workshop); and “create your own” classes, where people make a request and the arts center puts together an instructor.

You can also host a customized holiday art, dance or chess party with family and friends to learn, say, cartooning.

The arts center is also offering private lessons in all disciplines. – 45-60 minute sessions that are virtual, interactive, personalized to your learning style and experience, with the instructor providing feedback (people have signed on from Colorado and Chicago).

All of these programs are prime for gifts and the Arts Center offers the opportunity to give the gift of art or membership. “How great to gift your parents or grandparents with an amazing class or workshop – they may discover some hidden talent or unexplored interest.”

Purchases on Amazon can also support the arts center, which is a beneficiary on the Amazon Smile program.(Shop, then choose Gold Coast Arts in the Pick a Charitable Organization tab).

The arts center remade the website, goldcoastarts.org, with user-friendly menu and easy access to all class registrations).

Gold Coast Arts is a 501(c)(3) multi-arts organization dedicated to promoting the arts through education, exhibition, performance, and outreach. For a quarter-century, it has brought the arts to tens of thousands of people throughout the Long Island region. Among the Center’s offerings are its School for the Arts, which holds year-round classes in visual and performing arts for students of all ages and abilities; a free public art gallery; a concert and lecture series; film screenings and discussions; the annual Gold Coast International Film Festival; and initiatives that focus on senior citizens and underserved communities, including artist residencies, after-school programs, school assemblies, teacher-training workshops, and parent-child workshops. The Gold Coast Arts Center’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Gold Coast Arts Center is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts “Partners in Education” program and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.goldcoastarts.org.

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© 2020 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Arts, Arts & Entertainment, Culture, Long Island travel, Museums and Exhibits

‘Solar Impressions’ Exhibit at Gold Coast Arts Center Features Innovative ‘Solarplate’ Etching Process, Workshop

February 15, 2020 krubin723

Regina Gil, Founder and Executive Director of the Gold Coast Arts Center; DanWelden, artist, master printmaker, and director of Hampton Editions, Ltd., in Sag Harbor; and Jude Amsel, Gallery Director at Gold Coast Arts Center © *Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

by Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

“Solar Impressions,” a new art exhibit featuring works using the innovative Solarplate print-making process, has opened at the Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck, Long Island. The exhibit, which runs through April 10, 2020, brings together the works of more than 40 artists including internationally acclaimed American painter Eric Fischl. Each work of art is a representation of an ongoing exploration of the Solarplate etching process developed by Dan Welden, and reflects the extraordinary diversity of applications of the technique.

Noted artist, master printmaker, educator, and author, Dan Welden, was among scores of artists and art lovers on hand at an opening reception that took place on Sunday, January 26. Welden, director of Hampton Editions, Ltd., in Sag Harbor, is the developer of the Solarplate etching process, which uses light-sensitive material applied to a metal plate, and then hardened by the sun. The innovative process is a simpler and safer alternative to traditional etching that uses corrosive acids and is now used at universities and art schools all over the world.

*Ron Pokrasso, Who is Pulling My Chain, 2019 , “Solar Impressions” exhibit, Gold Coast Arts Center, Long Island.*

Solarplate eco-friendly sunlight and water to fix an image from a photograph or drawing into a steel plate which has been treated with polymer. Artists can apply color by hand into the ridges and grooves, or use a silk-screen process.

What is impressive is the versatility of the Solarplate process for artists across various media – photographers, painters, printers, collage makers – as well as the materials they use – paper, textured paper, Mulberry paper, fabric – which is very much on view in the Gold Coast exhibit.

“Rather than using all of these harmful materials that get inside an artist’s lungs and immune system, solarplate etching uses sunlight and water,” Welden said in an interview with Robert Pelaez of Blank Slate Media. “It’s pretty easy to grasp for people of all ages, and you don’t need an extensive artistic background for this.”

Solarplate is a light-sensitized steel-backed polymer material. Artist can work on the plate directly, with opaque materials in nonwater-based pigments, or by expose the plate through a transparent film with artwork on it. The artwork is printed on the plate through UV exposure for 2 to 5 minutes depending on light exposure, time of day and other variables.

When Welden first developed the technique, he called fellow artist Jude Amsel. and current Gold Coast Gallery Director Jude Amsel. More than 30 years later, Amsel, the Gold Coast Gallery Director, brought together 40 pieces of solarplate etching from across the country for the Gold Coast exhibit.

“At first I definitely had some questions about the process,” Amsel told Pelaez during a studio tour. “But once I did it, I realized how revolutionary an art form this would be for artists all over the world.”

Curator and artist Jude Amsel, with her works. Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Long Island, Presents Solar Impressions: Contemporary Printmaking © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“There’s a common ground of personal creativity,” Amsel said. “Some feature nature, traveling, or aspects of life that resonate with an artist, but there’s no limit to what can be done with solarplate etching. It’s one of the many things I think is fascinating about it.”

Jude Amsel, “Temps,” (2018) which incorporates Solarplate, Polaroid transfer and pastel. Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Long Island, Presents Solar Impressions: Contemporary Printmaking © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Amsel said artists from all backgrounds are able to use the technique. Even photographers can use the art form by reprinting and then shading in the outline of their subject through etching.

Kelli Glancy with her works, “Freedom Tower, Pier A” (2019) and “The Conductor” (2019). Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Long Island, Presents Solar Impressions: Contemporary Printmaking © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

One of them, photographer Kelli Glancey, has two pieces in the exhibit. Using the process, she has created photo images – shot in color on a phone – that harken back to Steichen and Stieglitz. Two of her works, “Freedom Tower, Pier A” (2019) and “The Conductor” (2019), are images taken from the 1907 Lackawana train depot in Hoboken, NJ, pay homage to Steiglitz who lived in Hoboken.

Describing herself as a “newbie” to solarplate, Lori Horowitz said, “Artists are so fixated on making art we poison ourselves. This is safe process for print making.” She holds up the original color photograph from which she made the black-and-white solarplate.

Lori Horowitz, “Four Under Four” (2019 ), Solar Impressions (c) Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“The realm of possibilities is really endless with solarplate,” Amsel told Pelaez. “My personal relationship with Dan makes this exhibit even more special. Watching him work and being a part of the early stages of this art is a blessing.”

Welden innovated the process but says he has not patented it. “I did it to share, not to own.” He travels around the world giving workshops in the technique.

Printmaking, which is almost 2,000 years old, developed in China with the invention of paper, is a process used in art to transfer images from a template onto another surface. The design is created on the template by working its flat surface with either tools or chemicals. Traditional printmaking techniques include engraving, etching, woodcut, lithography and screen-printing. In the 1970’s, Dan Weldon, a Long Island printmaker created Solarplate, a new printmaking technique.

Time-honored printing press is used in the Solarplate process. Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Long Island, Presents Solar Impressions: Contemporary Printmaking © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“Printmaking with Solarplate is a simple approach and safer alternative to traditional etching and relief printing,” Amsel writes in the introduction to the exhibit. “Solarplate is a prepared, light-sensitive polymer surface on a steel backing for artists to produce fine prints. Since Dan Welden’s development of the process in the 1970s, printmakers, painters, photographers and art teachers interested in multiple impressions have found printmaking with Solarplate a new tool. All an artist needs is inspiration, a graphic image crated on a transparent film (acetate or glass), sun or UV light, and ordinary tap water. Both positives and negatives can be utilized; intaglio and relief printing techniques can be applied.

Artist Barry Stern, “End of a Way” (2017) Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Long Island, Presents Solar Impressions: Contemporary Printmaking © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“Universities and art schools all over the world are using Solarplate as part of their curriculum. The simple, spontaneous approach also makes it faster and more economical for use in professional printmaking workshops and collaborations with artists. Educators are replacing traditional acid techniques with Solarplate because of safety regulations. Photographic in nature, Solarplate incorporates a broader range of techniques than any other printing medium,” Amsel writes in the introduction to the exhibit.

Welden’s 50-year career includes collaborations with numerous artists, including Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Jimmy Ernst, James Brooks, Kurt Vonnegut, and Eric Fischl, andis among those on display at the Gold Coast Arts Center Gallery. Fischl’s work graces the cover of the “Solar Impressions” souvenir catalog guide.

Artist Justin Greenwalk, “Crisis” (2019). Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Long Island, Presents Solar Impressions: Contemporary Printmaking © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Artworks in the exhibit are available for sale to the public, according to Regina Gil, Founder and Executive Director of the Gold Coast Arts Center. The artists have priced the art well to make them affordable to art lovers and collectors.

“‘Solar Impressions’ presents the public with a display of unique and creative works of art using Dan Welden’s innovative process now used by artists and art students around the world,” Gil said. “This is an opportunity for everyone to acquire some of these outstanding pieces.”

Chris Ann Ambery, “Guardian of the Past” (2019). Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Long Island, Presents Solar Impressions: Contemporary Printmaking © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The gallery is open to the public and is free. For more information about “Solar Impressions,” including gallery hours, visit www.goldcoastarts.org. For tour information or to register for classes, visit https://goldcoastarts.org/art-gallery/ or call 516-829-2570.

Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Long Island, Presents Solar Impressions: Contemporary Printmaking © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Printmaking workshops for adults will be offered at the Gold Coast Arts Center on Sunday, March 15, from 12-3 p.m. No experience necessary. (For information, visit https://goldcoastarts.org/event/solarplate-printmaking-workshop/)

Gold Coast Arts Center is a 501(c)(3) multi-arts organization dedicated to promoting the arts through education, exhibition, performance, and outreach. For a quarter-century, it has brought the arts to tens of thousands of people throughout the Long Island region. Among the Center’s offerings are its School for the Arts, which holds year-round classes in visual and performing arts for students of all ages and abilities; a free public art gallery; a concert and lecture series; film screenings and discussions; the annual Gold Coast International Film Festival; and initiatives that focus on senior citizens and underserved communities. These initiatives include artist residencies, after-school programs, school assemblies, teacher-training workshops, and parent-child workshops. The Gold Coast Arts Center is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts “Partners in Education” program and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Gold Coast Arts Center, 113 Middle Neck Rd., Great Neck, NY 11021, 516-829-2570, www.goldcoastarts.org.

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© 2020 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Arts & Entertainment, Cultural travel, Culture, Entertainment, Festivals and Events, Long Island travel

Ben Vereen Honored with Lifetime Achievement Award in Kickoff to 9th Annual Gold Coast International Film Festival

November 7, 2019 krubin723

Gold Coast Arts Center, Long Island, honors Actor, Entertainer Ben Vereen with Lifetime Achievement Award at opening of 9th Annual Gold Coast International Film Festival © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

by Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

Actor, entertainer Ben Vereen, honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Gold Coast Arts Center, Long Island, at the opening of its 9^th Annual Gold Coast International Film Festival, Nov. 4, 2019, brings a spiritual message to the arts which explains why he has been such a strong advocate for arts education, mentor and humanitarian.

“If you would ask, ‘Why is life so important to you?’ I would say, ‘In the beginning God created.’ It’s not ‘in the beginning God manufactured’. We are living, walking, talking art pieces of the One who created us. Our job is not just performing arts, but one aspect of life itself. Life is an art piece for everybody to see. We’re supposed to care for each other, love each other, show the wonders of creation – this building, these seats – didn’t just come here, they came from thought. A thought and we bring forth that which is manifested.

“Arts have saved people throughout the centuries. Art has calmed people from war. Art is here to embrace our lives. We are healed through the arts.”

Vereen tells the audience which included the young people from Uniondale High School who performed in their nationally acclaimed choir, Rhythm of the Knight, “Go play in hospitals. When someone would come to do art, music, singing, the vibration in building is higher. It’s important we support – we call it the arts- what it really is is ‘Let’s support life,’” he said to applause.

“The arts. Change the name to life – arts of life, the teaching part of life, the engineering part of life is all art.

If we give our children arts from the beginning, they will be better at school.”

And what do you tell a young person about pursuing a career in arts? Dilla asked. “Know thyself, study you, who you are, you are that art you would bring forth. Be conscious of who you are. It’s okay to take baby steps, eventually you will get you there. Don’t take rejection as a ‘no’ to your life – your life isn’t over, just a steppingstone to your higher self. Keep stepping up.

“We need you. Your form of art may not be on stage, it may be going to government. Your art might not be an interviewer like Frank Dilella, it might be to head a country and make the world a better place for everybody. Know thyself and to thine own self be true.”

Vereen offered insights into his life in a conversation with Frank DiLella, Emmy Award winning host of On Stage on Spectrum News NY1.

*Lifetime Achievement honoree Ben Vereen with Gold Coast Arts Center and Film Festival Founder & Executive Regina Gil, and Frank Dilella, host of Stage on Spectrum News* © *Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Vereen was honored for his epic performances that have been woven into the fabric of the nation’s artistic legacy – first coming to worldwide attention as Chicken George in the ground-breaking television series, Roots for which he won an Emmy nomination in 1977. He won a Tony Award as well as the Drama Desk Award for Best Actor in A Musical in 1973 for Pippin; and starred in Jesus Christ Superstar, Fosse, Hair, Jelly’s Last Jam, Chicago, I’m Not Rappaport and Wicked; and films including Sweet Charity and All that Jazz.

Vereen’s recent projects include the TV series Bull and Magnum PI, FOX’s Star, produced by Lee Daniels, Sneaky Pete with Bryan Cranston, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Time Out of Mind with Richard Gere, and Top Five with Chris Rock. He is currently working on his new Broadway musical, Reflections, written by Joe Calarco, to be directed by Tony nominee Josh Bergasse with music by Stephen Schwartz.

Vereen is heralded for promoting the talents and careers of young people – through education and access to the arts – wherever he gives concerts he holds master classes and in past concerts has provided the opportunity for a talented newcomer to make their debut on stage with him – and for his humanitarian work for which he has received numerous awards including Israel’s Cultural and Humanitarian Award, three NAACP Image Awards, Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award and a Victory Award.

In 2016, he signed with Americans for the Arts, the largest advocacy group of Arts in America and has spoken before Congress defending funding for the National endowment for the Arts.

Ben Vereen spoke of his career and his calling in a conversation with Frank Dilella:

Asked about how he got started in show business, a boy of modest means from Brooklyn, he said, “This career chose me.

“This career was handed to me. In my community in Brooklyn going to the High School of Performing Arts was like being a prodigal son. It is hard to say when I chose this, because it chose me. I would never have left Brooklyn except for performing arts school – –known as the Fame School.

Apparently he got into trouble, because he was placed in a so-called “three-digit school”.

“I was placed in class with Mr. Hill, the director of theater. I was with guys named Killer, Shank Diablo. Mr. Hill said he wanted me to do King and I. I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music – they had an all-African American company – 100 musicians – and did King and I. That was it – that was the bug.

Vereen attended the High School of Performing Arts from the age of 14 – where he studied dancing with stellar choreographers Martha Graham, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.

He was 18 years old when he made his New York stage debut off-off-Broadway in The Prodigal Son at the Greenwich Mews Theater. The following year he was in Las Vegas performing in Bob Fosse’s production of Sweet Charity.

He describes the audition for Sweet Charity.”Every dancer was on stage to audition – Bob Fosse was the coolest, he moved so smooth. He did the combination, smoked cigarettes, the ashes wouldn’t fall. He made the cut of dancers. Then it was time to sing. I had never seen a Broadway show.” He had nothing prepared but mimicked another and got the part anyway, going on to tour with the production from 1967-68.

He made his Broadway debut in original production of Hair. “It was a groundbreaking show, it made history.”

A real breakthrough was meeting Sammy Davis Jr. He reflected how important an influence Sammy Davis Jr. was to him. “Sammy was the first African American that I watched on tv. My father loved tv. One night Sammy was on the Ed Sullivan show.

Sammy saw Vereen at an audition. “I had attitude – Sammy Davis Jr saw it. He invited me to have dinner and hired me for Golden Boy. That’s where it began. I followed him, wanted to be like him, dress like him, the coolest cat. He loved everybody. People don’t give Sammy enough credit – he wasn’t just a song and dance man, but a great humanitarian. He died penniless because gave all his money to everybody.”

Davis took him on tour of Golden Boy to London when he was 25. That’s when he discovered he was adopted by James and Pauline Vereen, when he applied for a passport.

Vereen went on to be cast opposite Sammy Davis Jr. in the film version of Sweet Charity, and then as Davis’ understudy in Golden Boy in England.

His life changed – and nearly ended – on one fateful day in 1992 when he had three accidents the same day that put him in an ICU for 42 days when doctors thought he might never walk again.

“I don’t remember being hit by a car. The interesting thing about the spirit which inhabits this body, it decides to take a break, ‘but I’ll be back’. All I remember – Pamela [Cooper, his manager] told me this – I was driving and hit a tree, which damaged an artery in my brain. I was walking home, got a stroke, and was hit by an SUV. Amazingly, it was somebody I knew – David Foster, who I had met in Canada, a famous songwriter who wrote for Whitney Huston, Celine Dion, who had said, “We should get together.’ He could have left me and I wouldn’t be sitting here today but he stayed; he called 911, cradled me, waited for paramedics. They flew me to the hospital ICU. They told me I had a broken my left leg, suffered a stroke on right side, took out my spleen, I had an apparatus attached to my head, and a trach. The last thing I remember was getting into my car.”

“[In my mind I am thinking] what happened, why am I here? I can’t talk. All these things are going through your mind – this can’t be happening, I have show on Saturday.

“They told me it will be at least three years if you’ll ever walk again. At that point, I had just met a wonderful woman, Rev. Doctor Johnnie Coleman in Chicago [known as the “First Lady of the New Thought Christian Community] who taught metaphysics and would say, ‘Whenever you have something negative coming at you, learn this mantra, Cancel. That’s only man’s perception. Cancel.”

Meanwhile, he reflected, people crowded the hospital lobby praying for him. “There were letters, boxes of letters come in. Looking at boxes, thinking were bills, but they were from you [the fans].”

“[The doctors were saying] ‘We think you should think about another occupation.’ So when they sent in an occupational therapist, I thought they were to get me a new occupation instead of teaching me fine motor skills. Cancel, Cancel – I couldn’t talk.

“I said to myself if I can’t walk again, Lord, whatever you want me to do I’ll do… I had to show up – I couldn’t just lay there and ask God to heal me. I got to show up.”

“The thing about prayer, how it works – the doctor instinctively knew where to cut- spirit is always working in our favor. Steven Hawkins became my hero – if you can do that with Steven Hawkins, here I am.”

At the rehabilitation center in Kessler, NJ, he recalls, “There was a young man who had been shot named Michael Jackson, an orderly called Juice because he delivered the juice but his real name was Glen Miller, a therapist named Jerry Lewis.

“You don’t have the luxury of a negative thought. But I did what no one thought I could do, get back on Broadway.”

He was told there would be a part for him in Jelly’s Last Jam if he could be ready.

The therapists from Kessler went to show, and said, “We can do this, and a few months later, I walked on stage in Jelly’s Last Jam.

“Hear what that story is really about: the inner spirit is stronger than our physical human understanding of who we are. The idea, called surrender, take me as I am, I will go.”

Asked what he considers the highlight of his career, he reflects back to Roots.

“I heard about a show, Roots. Every African American in the world wanted to be a part of that. I go back to the same agent who said Pippin won’t make it and told him ABC was brave enough to put on show, Roots and I wanted to be a part. ‘Be real,’ he said. ‘They’re looking for actors. You’re song and dance man. So I went to Chicago –I was introducing Sister Sledge – then went to Savannah,Georgia. I did a character Bert Williams – African Americans in show business had to wear blackface and Williams made it art form. I did a tribute to him. [Roots’ producer] Stan Margulies knocked on my door and said he loved the show. ‘We’re shooting Roots for ABC, I want you to be my Chicken George.’ I fired my agent and off to Hollywood I went.”

In being awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gold Coast Arts Center, Ben Vereen is in good company. Previous honorees and special guests of the Gold Coast International Film Festival include film industry VIPs Francis Ford Coppola, Hugh Grant, Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Baz Luhrmann, Brian Dennehy, Paul Sorvino, Ed Burns, Bruce Dern, Isabella Rossellini, Lou Diamond Phillips, Morgan Spurlock, Eli Wallach, Gabriel Byrne, Jacques Pepin, Bill Plympton, Phil Donahue, Phylicia Rashaad, Joan Allen, Jay McInerney and Michael Cuesta, as well as composer Morton Gould, artists James Rosenquist, Oleg Cassini, Edwina SandysandBob Gruen, comedian Susie Essman, Broadway stars Kelli O’Hara, Melissa Errico andSavion Glover, and 4-time Oscar winner for production and costume design Catherine Martin.

*Ben Vereen with another Gold Coast Arts Center Lifetime Achievement honoree, artist Edwina Sandys, who is Winston Churchill’s granddaughter* © *Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The 9^th annual Gold Coast International Film Festival taking place From November 4-13, 2019, presents more than 80 feature-length and short films in venues throughout North Hempstead, Long Island and an opportunity to

This year’s highlights include The Two Popes, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce; which will be the Festival’s Closing Night Spotlight Film. Other films of note this year include Marriage Story, starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the winner of the Best Screenplay at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and Clemency, starring Alfre Woodard, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival will also be screening By the Grace of God, the Grand Jury Prize winner at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival.

“Films are a unique art form, bringing together drama, dance, music, art in 90 minutes. It’s one of the most accessible and affordable art forms. You come together with 200 others, smile, laugh, cry, think, learn, and sometimes be moved to action. How often do you get to hear from artists and creators how and why they made the film?” reflected Caroline Sorokoff, the festival director.

Among the narrative films that will provoke thought and action, “Wasted! The Story of Food Waste” from executive producer Anthony Bourdain, co-sponsored by Island Harvest, the first film in a new Gold Coast series spotlighting social issues of concern to Long Island.

Uniondale High School’s Show Choir, Rhythm of the Knight, performs as Gold Coast Arts Center, Long Island, honors Actor, Entertainer Ben Vereen with Lifetime Achievement Award at opening of 9th Annual Gold Coast International Film Festival © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The Gold Coast Arts Center is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting the arts through education, exhibition, performance, and outreach. Located on the North Shore of Long Island, it has brought the arts to tens of thousands of people from toddlers, tweens, teens to totterers throughout the region for 25 years. Among the Center’s offerings are its School for the Arts, which holds year-round classes in visual and performing arts for students of all ages and abilities; a free public art gallery; concerts and lectures; film screenings and discussions; the annual Gold Coast International Film Festival; and initiatives that focus on senior citizens and underserved communities. These initiatives include artist residencies, after-school programs, school assemblies, teacher-training workshops, and parent-child workshops. The Gold Coast Arts Center is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education program, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. More information can be found at www.goldcoastarts.org.

Gold Coast Arts Center President Jon Kaiman and Founder and Executive Director Regina Gil (center) with North Hempstead town Councilwoman Viviana L. Russell, North Hempstead Supervisor Judi Bosworth and Nassau County Executive Laura Curran. The Gold Coast Arts Center, Long Island, honored Actor, Entertainer Ben Vereen with Lifetime Achievement Award at opening of 9th Annual Gold Coast International Film Festival © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

For information about upcoming films in the Festival’s year-round film screening program plus the latest news on the 2019 Festival visit www.goldcoastfilmfestival.org 516-829-2570.

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© 2019 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Arts & Entertainment, Attractions, Festivals and Events

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Famous ‘Goddess of Good Sex,’ Talks Frankly About Surviving Holocaust at Gold Coast Arts Center Screening of ‘Ask Dr. Ruth’

May 10, 2019 krubin723

Dr. Ruth Westheimer answers questions from the audience at a screening of the documentary about her life, “Ask Dr. Ruth,” at the Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck, Long Island © *Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

by Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the famous sex therapist, claims to have a rule against commenting on politics “someone who talks about sex as much as I do can’t tackle politics.” And yet, positions on sexual freedom, AIDs, abortion rights and reproductive freedom, and more recently, drawing upon painful memories as a Holocaust survivor, on the rise of anti-Semitism and how migrant children are being snatched from their families at the southern border.

She claims not to be a feminist, but when her granddaughter prods her on her views on abortion, on equal pay, on whether men and women should be equal in their relationship, and insists she is the text-book definition of a feminist, Dr. Ruth relents and says she is a feminist supporter, not a radical (she doesn’t hold with burning bras).

She also stood stalwartly for same-sex relationships and was an early advocate for research into prevention and cure of AIDs. She has consistently championed a philosophy of respect for individuals, that there is no such thing as “normal,” but that two consenting adults should do what brings both joy and satisfaction.

She claims to have a rule against commenting on politics “someone who talks about sex as much as I do can’t tackle politics.” And yet, positions on sexual freedom, AIDs, abortion and now, anti-Semitism, invariably bring her into that realm.

She has come to the Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck, Long Island, on May 8, for the screening of a documentary about her life, “Ask Dr. Ruth.” The connection to these issues is Michael Glickman, a former president of the Arts Center and President & CEO, the Museum of Jewish Heritage (New York’s Holocaust Museum), where Dr. Ruth is also a trustee, and presently has an important exhibit, “Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away” which opened May 8.

*Michael Glickman, president and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, chats with Dr. Ruth Westheimer at the Great Neck screening of the documentary “Ask Dr. Ruth.”* © *Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The documentary of her life focuses considerable attention on the Holocaust and how it shaped her life – beginning as a 10 year old, packed up on a train with other Orthodox Jewish children to Switzerland, forced to leave her mother and grandmother at a train station in Frankfurt (her father had already been taken by Nazis to a labor camp). She never saw her family again, but describes how she felt in those years living at an orphanage.

Her son and daughter say how she never really discussed her experience in the Holocaust nor fully mourned the loss of her family, but we see – through old photos and animation and diary entries – what she experienced. And it was only relatively recently that she brought herself to Yad VaShem in Israel to search the database to find out what happened to her parents. In the movie, she realizes that something is wrong when letters stop coming from her parents, and after years go by, she accepts that she is an orphan. She learns that her father was murdered in 1942 in Auschwitz, and her mother was simply “disappeared.”

But what we see throughout is an unbelievably positive, optimistic personality who was able to get the other children on that train to sing away their fear.

Dr. Ruth, as she delights in being known (the first tv/radio host to be known just by the first name), is turning 91 years old now, and on her 90^th birthday, she reflected how 80 years before, she was on that train bravely waving goodbye to her family (her parents gave her life twice – the second time when they sent her away); 70 years before, she nearly lost her legs when a bomb went off in Israel, where she was a sniper in the Haganah.

While in the orphanage in Switzerland, the girls were being trained to become housemaids and weren’t allowed to attend high school, but her father always prized education. Her first boyfriend would sneak into her room at night with his textbooks, and hide under her bed while she read that day’s lessons.

After the war, she emigrated to Israel (Palestine) with some friends, changing her name from Karola, which sounded too German, to her middle name, Ruth (and hoping that her family, if they were still alive, could find her).

She’s been married three times – the first time to a very good-looking Israeli soldier; who took her to Paris with him when he attended medical school, affording the opportunity for her to study psychology at the Sorbonne; they divorced when he decided not to become a doctor and to return to Israel and she stayed to finish her studies.

In 1956, with $1,500 in restitution from the West German government, she and her boyfriend sailed to New York, traveling fourth class on the Liberty but sneaking up to first class in order to be able to view the Statue of Liberty as the ship came into New York harbor. They married after she got pregnant, but the marriage didn’t last.

She was a single parent and a working mother when that was still a rarity and an oddity. “We were very poor. There were no other single mothers…“I was on the forefront.” (One of my favorite parts of the movie was the clip of her talking with Gloria Steinem.)

She worked for Planned Parenthood in Harlem, where she found herself participating in frank discussions about sex. By 1967, she was project director. She worked towards her doctorate in family and sex counseling at Columbia University, working with Helen Singer Kaplan, a pioneer in the field of sex therapy.

On a ski trip in the Catskills, she met the love of her life, Fred Westheimer who was the head of the Jewish Ski Club, 35 years old, an engineer and never married. From the first time she saw him, she was determined they would marry. They were married for more than 40 years before he died, in 1997, after a heart attack.

Dr. Ruth displays the sense of humor and optimistic outlook that no doubt helped her get through the tragedies in her life © *Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Dr. Ruth, a 4 foot 7 inch tall woman famous for saying “Size doesn’t matter,” got her doctorate at the age of 42 and set up practice as a sex therapist.

A lecture she delivered in 1980 came to the attention of Betty Elam, community affairs manager of the New York radio station WYNY-FM, who offered Ruth $25 a week to make Sexually Speaking, a 15-minute show every Sunday that would air shortly after midnight. The show became a hit, expanding to two-hours, and by 1984 was nationally syndicated.

Her influence as the “Goddess of Good Sex,” as one called her, expanded with a syndicated newspaper column, television shows, appearances in movies and even commercials and a website.

She continues to live in the same Washington Heights apartment she has lived in for more than 54 years, saying that she feels comfortable among other immigrants.

The movie is expertly done – telling the story of a life that is even more dramatic and worthy of a movie than most people, who knew of Dr. Ruth only as someone breaking down barriers of frank talk about sex, realized. Who knew she was a sniper with the Haganah in the early days of Israel, who was caught in a bomb blast and almost lost her legs? Who knew she was married three times (the first two were legalized love affairs, she jokes, the third was the real thing). And who knew of the tragedy she suffered as a Holocaust survivor.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer at a screening of the documentary about her life, “Ask Dr. Ruth,” at the Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck, Long Island © *Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

She expresses her absolute surprise (and delight) in becoming a radio, then TV host (“I’m not tall, blonde, gorgeous”), but notes that being an older, mature woman (grandmotherly), she was able to get away with talking explicitly about sex, using such words as vagina, clitoris, masturbation. The fact that the Sexual Revolution (the Pill is 50 years old) was underway, with women beginning to demand their rights and identity, also was a factor. Still, as the film notes, there were censors standing by, protests, even a man who came up on stage where she was speaking to make a citizen’s arrest.

In the film, she revisits people from her childhood – her first boyfriend when she was 13 from the orphanage in Switzerland where she was sent by her mother to escape the Nazis (“My parents gave me life twice, the first time giving birth, the second time sending me away so I could live”); her childhood friend who lives in Israel; her earliest radio producers.

It shows her dogged determination to get an education – something her father, who owned a notions shop, valued so highly. She earned her Masters, then her PhD.

Media regulations at the time required radio stations to do community-oriented broadcasting and a producer appreciated how different Dr. Ruth would be, so put her show, pre-taped on a Thursday, on Sunday at midnight. Her show became more popular than most of the morning drive shows and they put her on live. She notes that she never previewed what questions the callers would be asking, so she could respond spontaneously (on the other hand, on TV, the people posing the questions were actors, though she still did not know what issues they would raise).

When asked her greatest experience, she replies “My 4 grandchildren… You know, Hitler is dead and I and my grandchildren are alive.”

Asked about her reaction to the movie, she said she had trepidation about the device of using animation to show her early life, but the two Israelis who did the animation “did it brilliantly.”

She reflected on the scene they re-created at the railroad station in 1938, when she was 10 and being sent away by her mother and grandmother. “You know, there were all the other mothers and grandmothers – the fathers had been taken – but they did something brilliant [in suggesting there were only a few on the platform]: you could feel the loneliness of a mother and grandmother saying goodbye, not knowing what would happen, but sending their only child to safety. When I saw this – and I didn’t see it before it was done – I was very happy with the film.”

She jokes, “I promise good sex for anybody who gives this film an [Oscar] nomination.”

She acknowledges that she had not spoken much in the past about being a Holocaust survivor, but that the new exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, “Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away,” has brought that aspect of her life out. “My work has been about how to educate, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“You have to go twice to the exhibit,” she says. “The first time you will be very upset. Go again to learn something about the history of Nazis coming to power.

“In the front [of the museum] is a cattle car –it is upsetting because I know parents, other grandparents- all of them went on a car like that – very upsetting – that makes me feel like I felt January 5 1939. On the other hand, you have to stand up to be counted, especially these days.

“As you have heard, I don’t do politics, but these days, I have to talk about anti-Semitism, to stand up and say all of us have to fight so this will not happen again.”

Also, “as you have seen in the film clearly, to stand up that abortion must remain legal and family planning needs funding.”

Though she does not “do politics,” she won an Oxford debate defending abortion and family planning. “I’m going again –I probably will be the oldest at age 91.” This time she will be debating pornography.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer at a screening of the documentary about her life, “Ask Dr. Ruth,” at the Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck, Long Island with Joseph Gil, GCAC VP Fundraising, Regina Gil, Founder & Executive Director, Michael Glickman, past president and President and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage © *Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Asked about her opinion of dating apps like Tinder, Dr. Ruth says, “I did not plant that question – but this summer, I have a book coming which warns about apps. It’s not that you shouldn’t use, but you have to use your brains not to meet in a secluded place – to meet in hotel lobby, movie, some place safe.

“Another thing that worries me – in my new book, is that the art of conversation is being lost. Everyone is looking at their phone as if world will crumble if not constantly looking. It’s difficult to have conversation. But the best sexual relationship is also when you have a good relationship.”

In another book that Dr. Ruth is coming out with this year, “Crocodile You’re Beautiful,” she says, “I am telling a little ant to be happy to be an ant – because if you cooperate, you can build bridges.”

Asked if she has been back to Frankfurt, where she was born, she says she goes each year to the Frankfurt book fair, and “every year I am back with a new contract. I also taught a seminar at Heidelberg. I have no problems with people my age or younger – it’s older people I didn’t want to know – like Fiddler. On the other hand, the Adenauer from Germany was instrumental in getting money to Israel when it was just being born. And even today, I go to Israel every year and even today there are young Germans who go for the summer or year to volunteer in old age homes. I appreciate that.”

But, she adds, saying, “Thank you for question – I never came near to that railroad station –it’s too painful – so whenever I had to go some place, I went around not to go to railroad station where I saw my mother and grandmother for the last time.”

She says that for her Masters degree, she did a longitudinal study of 50 children “who came with me to orphanage in Switzerland. I found them all, I went to archives in Switzerland and was in touch with many. They all made it – none of them committed suicide, none became drug addicts or alcoholics. The reason is the early socialization –their early years of childhood. I was 10 ½ – the youngest was 6 – so the early socialization, all had in loving home with parents. That helped them all to overcome becoming orphans. They should do more studies about early socialization, how important early childhood years are.”

She adds, “I do say I am not involved in politics, except these days I have changed my mind – I am very upset when I see children being separated.”

She closes by urging people to visit the “Auschwitz” exhibit at the Museum for Jewish Heritage. “it’s the most remarkable Holocaust exhibition in this country.”

The groundbreaking exhibition, on view through January 3, 2020, brings together more than 700 original objects and 400 photographs from over 20 institutions and museums around the world. “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away” is the most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the history of Auschwitz – a complex of 48 concentration and extermination camps where 1 million Jews and tens of thousands of others were murdered – and its role in the Holocaust ever presented in North America, and an unparalleled opportunity to confront the singular face of human evil—one that arose not long ago and not far away. (Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Place, New York, NY 10280 https://mjhnyc.org/discover-the-exhibition/about-the-exhibition/)

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Arts, Arts & Entertainment, Long Island travel, Museums and Exhibits, Uncategorized

Gold Coast Arts Center, Long Island Presents ‘Chinese Artists in America’ Exhibit

January 17, 2019 krubin723

*Artists Ping Wang and Arthur Liu with Town North Hempstead Supervisor Judi Bosworth and Gold Coast Arts Center Executive Director Regina Gil at opening of exhibit, “Chinese Artists in America*” *© Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

The Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck, Long Island presents an exhibition of “Chinese Artists in America.” The works by eight contemporary Chinese-American artists is on view through March 20.

“The exhibition reflects the creative vitality of Chinese and American cultural interaction and growth through the arts and its historical and aesthetic links to other communities,” Gallery Curator Jude Amsel writes.

“These artists created a new visual language that embodies aspects of traditional Chinese art while responding to a time of great transition. Their artworks express personal beliefs, national pride, and international awareness.”

“The Gold Coast Arts Center is dedicated to promoting awareness and understanding through the arts and through public events that bring people together,” stated Regina Gil, founder and Executive Director of the Gold Coast Arts Center. “We are proud to have enabled artists from around the world to share their vision and craft with our audiences. The exhibition of art by Chinese-American artists weaves the heritage, experience and craft that has emerged from each artist’s personal exposure to Chinese and American culture and education.”

The opening reception for the art exhibition was accompanied by a cultural performance, music and dance presented under the aegis of the Great Neck Chinese Association.

Here are highlights, with the artists’ own statements.

*Zhen Guo* *© Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Zhen Guo: “With ‘Muted Landscape; I present a view of the world, and we who live on its surface, that is at once expansive and frightening. The images, created (I do not say painted because there is no obvious brush work in the ink on rice paper creation) present a landscape as if from 36,000 feet, muted by both the gray color and by the distance. Mountains, lakes, a sheer rock face wall, caldera, fields of snow, high and pointed peaks and rivers are joined and blended but not necessarily in the places or ways we expect. It is as if the vision of Ansel Adams has been stirred shaken and kneaded merged a late Autumn vision of the natural world. As our eyes travel over the painting the view changes and rivers become shadows, mountains become fields, and lakes become snow covered peaks. We are entranced and at the same time afraid that, if we landed, there we could not find our way out. Perhaps this is a place for own internal search for a perch for our soul or to find our way forward.”

*“Country Fair,” by Dexiang Qian* *© Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Dexiang Qian: “I was born in Zhijiang. Many artists have come to Zhijiang to observe, sketch, and experiment with depicting the rural countryside. During my creation process, I use a glazing technique with a limited color palette. I continue to simplify the elements, and the resulting composition often is in geometric patterns.” © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

*Xiangdong Shi* *© Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Xiangdong Shi: ““Food: Chinese beauty, taste and auspicious meaning. Chinese cuisine is not only delicious, but also the pursuit of form and color, such as Sweet Dumplings, put in a few red medlar, and immediately look happy, and eat the Sweet Dumplings at the Lantern Festival, so the Sweet Dumplings are also called Yuan Xiao, means the first full moon night of the year. Chinese cuisine is rich and auspicious Meaning, such as birthday, Chinese people often cook a bowl of noodles, called longevity noodles, meaning healthy longevity. Another example is the Traditional Chinese Rice-Pudding, is the exclusive food of the Dragon Boat Festival, it is to commemorate the ancient Chinese famous poet Qu Yuan, in addition, often in the Traditional Chinese Rice-Pudding have any jujubes, white rice and red jujubes are put together, the color contrast is strong. Red has a special meaning in Chinese culture, and represents good luck. Therefore, the food series I painted not only expresses the taste of food, but also the sense of form and meaning of food. This is the true essence of Chinese culture.”

*Arthur B. Liu © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Arthur B. Liu is President of Queens Art Education Center, New York, visiting professor of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, member of the Watercolor Society of USA, artist of the National Art League of USA, director of the Chinese Culture Art Association of New York, USA. He is the Educator, Artist and Inventor. He is the only one Chinese American artist who has been granted patents for inventions. He is showing “The flowing colors Chinese painting series” in this exhibition.

Ping Wang *© Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Ping Wang: “The initial idea of my “In and Out” series were body parts extended from a “Square”(space ) merged into a background. The background scenes are from Chinese illusional landscapes to recent New York City landmarks and daily life. After a year or two reminiscing in depth I subconsciously escaped in the collision between China and American culture. I was enormously inspired by traditional Chinese composition and techniques. In the ‘Fight Club; series, I tried to combine some oriental perspectives and compositions into a Western story. Now living in New York for several years, I can see the integration of eastern and western cultures.”

*“Sacrifice the Body to Feeding the Tiger,” by Yulin Huang*
*© Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Yulin Huang: “In the face of the canvas, I have never forgotten all the so-called knowledge, just by intuition, in a simple, primitive, child-like way, straightforward and quick to smear. “Sacrifice the Body to Feeding the Tiger” (2018) is a “Dunhuang” mural from the ancient East, painted on the walls of the grotto 2000 years ago. It tells a Buddhist story. A prince, giving up his life and helping his hunger with his own flesh The hungry tiger mother and son are born into Buddha after death. Like the cross that Jesus passed. In “Chinese New Year,” red lanterns, dragon dances, lion dances, firecrackers, fireworks, spring couplets, red envelopes… The people celebrate the biggest festivals, joyous and lively. But I feel a very loneliness.”

*Hai We*i *© Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Hai Wei: “Even though we all advocate tolerance, different habits and beliefs sometimes constitute an offense. Each different culture and art is connected of each other while learning from each other and integrating with each other. When the plane flies over the Arctic Circle, across the window, the outside is a mountain like a scarf, inside is a scarf like a mountain… All things connected, miraculous conversion. Similarly, in the body, the blood, the fresh life, can also be converted and reincarnation? We have been watching ourselves for too long and rarely look at them. Most people think the sheep is weak ,ordinary, silent. In fact, they still have power and charm of wildness. The art created by nature is life, the beauty of life, and it does not depend on us. It is a kind of dignity.”

*Yafu Wang with “Chinese Artists in America” curator Jude Amsel © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Yafu Wang: Yafu’s works are varied and diverse. Those selected art pieces cover his early works in road, shadows, posters, and temples etc. Yafu always states that his work expresses his deep love and awe for the mighty God. It fulfills all the missing parts in his life.

Here are highlights from the performances:

Chinese Drum “Ma Deng Dance” featuring Anthony Wu, Dorie Liu, Kexin Huang, Yuxin Huang, Kingsley Liu. © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Chinese Guzheng Duet “Dong Ting New Song” featuring Ella Li, Shiying Wei. © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Chinese Cucurbit Flute Solo, “Wedding Vow,” featuring Ricky Deng © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Violin & Piano in Chinese song, “Painted Heart” with Aili Tian, Phoenix tian, Joy Yang and Selena Lu (piano). © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Chinese Instruments ensemble “Xi Yang Yang (Be Happy)” “Turpan’s Grapes Turn Ripe (with Dance)” featuring Xiulu Xin (Banhu):, Yuqi Sun (Erhu), Xianyi Wang (Dulcimer), Xiuzhen Liang (Ruan), Rongxian Chen (Electronic Guitar), Cathong Li (Rock Percussion/Dance) © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Children’s Chorus: Jasmine Flowers featuring Evan Cao, Derick Chen, Melissa Chiang, Jessica Chiang, Anthony Chiang, Athena Jin, Ella Li, Jack Pei, Dorothy Qian, Lucas Wang, Madeline Wang, Isabella Wu, Kenneth Wu, Katharine Xu, Carolyn Zuo and Kaitlyn Feng (piano) © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Gold Coast Arts Center, Long Island Presents Chinese Artists in America

The Gallery is open when the Gold Coast Arts Center is open, 113 Middle Neck Road, Great Neck, NY, 516-829-2570, goldcoastarts.org.

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Arts & Entertainment, Festivals and Events

Gold Coast International Film Festival Announces 2018 Winners

November 15, 2018 krubin723

by Karen Rubin

Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

*Regina Gil, executive director of the Gold Coast International Film Festival and Gold Coast Arts Center, at awards luncheon © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

After 10 days and 80 films from 22 countries screened, many the United States or Long Island premiere, the 2018 Gold Coast International Film Festival came to a close and declared the winners:

The Audience Award Winner for Best Narrative was “The Lost Suit,” a bittersweet story made in Argentina and Spain by Pablo Solarz about an 88-year-old Jewish tailor who embarks on a long, transcontinental journey to try and find the man who saved him from certain death during the Holocaust. Heartfelt and charming, with a wonderful comedic flavor, the film reminds us of the importance of family, friendship, and keeping your word. Out of 230 audience-goers, 212 gave the film the highest ranking. “People were obsessed with it.” The Gold Coast arts center, which stages cinema series throughout the year, is hoping to bring it back.

*Regina Gil, GCIFF founder, and Caroline Sorokoff, Festival Director, present GCIFF 2018 award for Best Narrative to “The Last Suit” © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The Audience Award Winner for Best Documentary Feature Film went to “Heading Home,” by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, Jeremy Newberger, a stirring underdog chronicle of the unexpected triumph of Israel’s national baseball team at the 2017 World Baseball Classic. With their Mensch on the Bench mascot by their side, the team laughs and cries as they discover the pride of representing Israel on the world stage. The screening featured a Q&A with Co-Director Jeremy Newberger.

The Audience and Jury Award Winners for Best Narrative Short Film went to “Stems” and Best Documentary Short Film award was won by two films, “Wendy’s Shabbat” and “One Small Step.”

Regina Gil, GCIFF founder, and Alexandra Gil, curator of the festival Shorts, present GCIFF 2018 awards for Best Short Documentary Film to “Wendy’s Shabbat” and “One Small Step” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

A new award this year, Best Family Short Film, went to Rag Dolls.

Shorts film curator Alexandra Gil viewed some 2,000 submissions before making the selections for the festival.

*The winner of the new Gold Coast International Film Festival 2018 Award for Best Family Short Film went to “Rag Dolls” © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The awards winners for the 8^th annual festival were named at a gala lunch at the NM Café at Neiman Marcus Roosevelt Field, a major sponsor of the festival, which also supports youth arts programs. Other major sponsors included the Town of North Hempstead and Douglas Elliman Real Estate, which provided important seed money “when we were just an idea” and have kept up. Hofstra University is also a major supporter, offering film programs including internships.

Some 4,000 tickets were sold; audience goers came from 180 zipcodes. Audience goers get to see films that are rarely screened outside of independent theaters in New York City – the festival brings films to the suburbs. Many of the documentaries, like “Bathtubs Over Broadway,” an astonishing documentary about Steve Young’s quest to collect Industrial Musicals which sets him on a journey to meet the makers; and “Happy” Academy Award® nominated director Roko Belic’s film explores the secrets behind our most valued emotion, traveling from the bayous of Louisiana, the deserts of Namibia, the beaches of Brazil and the villages of Okinawa to a communal home in Denmark; and short films are only seen at festivals. There are also opportunities to hear from filmmakers and historians and engage in question and answers. One special program gives Young Filmmakers, from K-12, a chance to shine (and shine they did).

Here are more highlights from the festival:

A musical-comedy-documentary! Comedy writer Steve Young’s assignment to scour bargain-bin vinyl for a Late Night with David Letterman segment becomes an unexpected, decades-spanning obsession when he stumbles upon the strange and hilarious world of industrial musicals in this amazing, revelatory and entertaining film, “Bathtubs Over Broadway,” by Dava Whisenant. The film’s star, Steve Young, participated in a Q&A after the GCIFF screening © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Paul Lieberstein, best known as Toby from “The Office,” plays nice-guy Fred in “Song of Back and Neck,” this charming romantic comedy which Lieberstan also directed. Fred rarely gets through the day without falling to the ground with crippling back and neck pain, and is not taken seriously by anyone at work. But as he discovers unexpected love and a rather unique talent, it is just the start of the unpredictable happenings coming his way. Lieberstein joined an audience Q&A via Skype following the Long Island premiere of his film © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“Howard,” an intimate and insightful tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent, the legendary lyricist Howard Ashman by Don Hahn, revealed the incalculable impact Ashman had on Broadway, movies and the culture at large even beyond his ingenious lyrics. The audience gets to see much of his creative process behind such stellar hits as “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Little Shop of Horrors.” Howard’s sister, Sarah Ashman Gillespie and his partner Bill Lauch were on hand after the screening, which was sponsored by AARP Long Island, for a Q&A and to share their personal reflections © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

What makes you happy? Money? Kids and family? Your work? Academy Award-nominated director Roko Belic’s documentary, “Happy” explores the secrets behind our most valued emotion. From the bayous of Louisiana, the deserts of Namibia, the beaches of Brazil and the villages of Okinawa to a communal home in Denmark, Belic goes in search of what really makes people happy. The GCIFF presentation was sponsored by Katz Institute for women’s Health at Northwell Health, and a panel of experts from the Center for Wellness and Integrative Medicine and Katz Institute were on hand to discuss the role of mindfulness and innovations in integrated, holistic approaches: Tina Conroy, Director of Energy and Healing; Bella Grossman, Clinical Psychologist, Marissa Licata, Registered Dietition, Deborah McElligott, Cardiac Nurse Practitioner and Lucy Gade, Medical Director © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Filmmaker Andrew Toscanao, who is in fifth grade at Northside elementary in Plainview, NY, discusses his film, “The Lego Agent: Dr. Evil’s Revenge” at the Gold Coast International Film Festival’s Young Filmmakers Program. Young Filmmakers are also invited to participate in a free day of hands-on filmmaker workshops for filmmakers in grades 7-12, Saturday, March 16, at Hofstra University, a festival sponsor © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

*Eliad Lienhardt came from Switzerland to discuss the making of his film short, “Alison”after the screening at the Gold Coast International Film Festival © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Famed director Peter Bogdanovich has created a love-letter to Buster Keaton, one of Hollywood’s most prolific, influential and innovative filmmakers, Buster Keaton. “The Great Buster,” is a celebration of Keaton’s life, career and legacy. The story told with stunning restorations of archival works that bring Keaton’s magic to life on the big screen, plus interviews with his friends, family, collaborators, and a broad array of artists influenced by his singular vision, including Mel Brooks, Bill Hader, Cybil Shepherd and Quentin Tarantino. Professor Rodney F. Hill, film scholar, was on hand for a Q&A after the screening of the documentary © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The 2018 festival kicked off with a Gold Coast Arts Center gala in Great Neck, Long Island honoring film and television star Robert Wagner with the second annual Burton Moss Hollywood Golden Era Award in recognition of his long, illustrious career that began in 1950. (See story.)

Actor Robert Wagner, honored with the Gold Coast Film Festival’s second annual Burton Moss Hollywood Golden Era Award at the Gold Coast Arts Center’s gala, discusses his career with film historian, author, and professor Foster Hirsch © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

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© 2018 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin , and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Arts & Entertainment, Festivals and Events

Gold Coast Film Festival Kicks Off With Gala Honoring Film & TV Legend Robert Wagner with Hollywood Golden Era Award

November 2, 2018 krubin723 1 Comment

by Karen Rubin

Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

The stars shone over the Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck, Long Island as film and television star Robert Wagner was honored with the second annual Burton Moss Hollywood Golden Era Award in recognition of his long, illustrious career that began in 1950 with his film debut in The Happy Years. The award was presented at the center’s annual gala which also helped raise funds for the nonprofit Arts Center and its Gold Coast International Film Festival, which starts on Friday, November 2, 2018 on the storied Gold Coast of Nassau County’s North Shore, once home to entertainment legends including W. C. Fields, Paulette Goddard, Oscar Hammerstein, Alan King, Francis Ford Coppola, George Segal, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Joining Wagner at the gala were such luminaries as his wife, actress Jill St. John; his daughter Courtney Wagner, who co-hosts Boulevard, their new cable program about the movie stars of Hollywood; actress Sharon Gless (Cagney and Lacey) and her husband, producer Barney Rosenzweig; and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, whose mother, the late Rita Hayworth, posthumously received the first Burton Moss Hollywood Golden Era Award in 2017.

Iconic talent agent, Budd Burton Moss, the award’s namesake, also attended the event in tribute to his childhood friend. Moss, the most respected and admired talent agent of Hollywood’s Golden Age, attended elementary school in California with Wagner, forging a relationship that has endured since.

Actress Diane Baker and noted radio and television personality Larry King sent along their best wishes via video. Also in attendance were Harriet Fields, granddaughter of the late W.C. Fields, and renowned film historian and film professor, Foster Hirsch, who moderated a candid, lively and informative discussion with Wagner before the presentation of the award.

Wagner may well hold the record for longest continuous career – he has been acting for 70 years, a fact acknowledged by tributes from Larry King and actor Diane Baker.

During the conversation with Hirsch, Wagner spoke of his mentors, who bolstered his career: actor Spencer Tracy, who “changed my life,” and film producer Darryl Zanuck, who basically discovered him, developed him and said of him, “You will be a big star.”

Clark Gable got him a screen test at MGM, but that didn’t work out, and got a contract with 20^th Century Fox ($55 a week), where he stayed for 20 years, a part of the studio system.

“The studio system worked well for me. People at 20^th Century Fox looked out for their people.” His departure coincided with the collapse of the studio system.

“I owe my career to Darryl Zanuck,” he said. “He knew scripts, stories, believed in the people around him. He really cared about me.. Darryl was watching me. When he left [the studio], it was a different situation.”

He joked that he wasn’t happy doing “Prince Valiant,” revolutionary for being one of the first movies filmed in Cinemascope. “It was the wig – it got in the way. Dean Martin talked to me for 10 minutes; he thought I was Jane Wyman.”

He reflected on his transition from film to television – something that wasn’t done at the time. “Lou Wasserman said to me, ‘I want you in this magazine – TV Guide. I think this medium is for you.” Wasserman proposed making a pilot for “It Takes a Thief,” and promised that if it wasn’t picked up, he would make it into a movie. It wasn’t picked up; he made the movie, and then it was picked up.”

“It started mid-season,” Wagner related. “That’s death. I thought my career was gone. But the audience liked it.”

Fred Astaire was his co-star. “There was nobody like him. A meticulous man. I asked him to play my father. I knew him when I was a kid – I went to boarding school with his son. Who asked me over for the weekend at his house. Astaire picked me up, put me in the back seat of his convertible – I was 7 or 8 years old. I didn’t know who Astaire was at the time. I spent a lot of time with him over the years.”

Hirsch pressed him on how his mentors seemed to all be father figures because his own father was “rather difficult.”

“My father was a product of that era. He did things his way. I was programmed to go into his business – steel. I always wanted to be actor in movies, from time I saw my first movie.”

Gold Coast Arts Center/Gold Coast Film Festival Executive Director Regina Gil with actor and gala honoree Robert Wagner and professor Foster Hirsch at the Gold Coast Arts Center gala. © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

He spoke of the many “marvelous leading ladies” he worked with: Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, to list but a few,” writing about them in his book, “I Loved Her in the Movies,” one of three Hollywood memoirs he has published.

“You can’t be a leading man without a leading lady.”

And he spoke lovingly and admiringly of his wife, the actress Natalie Wood, whose real name was Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, a child of Russian immigrants. She made her debut before she was five years old in a 15-second scene in the 1943 film, “Happy Land,” and at the age of seven, played a German orphan opposite Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert in “Tomorrow is Forever” (1946).

“They dyed her hair blond and taught her a German accent… She had God-given talent.”

He said that he doesn’t believe “West Side Story” would have been made without Wood. “She was so good at accents. She was good at everything.”

Among the stars in attendance at the Gold Coast Arts Center Gala honoring actor Robert Wagner with the second annual Burton Moss Hollywood Golden Era Award, were actor Jill St. John, his wife; Sharon Gless and her husband, Barney Rosenzweig, the producer of Cagney & Lacey; and Hollywood agent Burton Moss © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

In the audience was his wife, Jill St. John, “the first Bond girl,” with whom he performed “Love Letters” on the stage, criss-crossing the country for nine years.

“The performances had to be different, otherwise they would have had to take me away with a net. We had to keep it different.”

Wagner’s numerous film credits includes With a Song in My Heart, Broken Lance with the legendary Spencer Tracy, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, The Pink Panther, The Curse of the Pink Panther, Midway, The Towering Inferno, Banning, Harper, Prince Valiant, The True Story of Jesse James, and All the Fine Young Cannibals. He re-created his role of Number Two, the villainous henchman to Dr. Evil, the archenemy of Mike Myers’ title character in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

On television, Wagner has starred in three long-running hit series, It Takes a Thief, with Fred Astaire, Switch, with Eddie Albert and Sharon Gless and Hart to Hart, with Stefanie Powers. He also starred in the top-rated miniseries Windmills of the Gods, based on Sidney Sheldon’s best-selling novel; with Joanne Woodward in A Kiss Before Dying; and with Elizabeth Taylor in There Must Be a Pony. He also appeared in the memorable Seinfeld episode, “The Yada, Yada, Yada,” as Dr. Abbot.

Edwina Sandys, the sculptor (and Winston Churchill’s granddaughter); actor and honoree Robert Wagner; Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Haywood, the award’s first recipient and spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Association; and Hollywood agent Burton Ross at the presentation of the Burton Moss Hollywood Golden Era Award at the Gold Coat Arts Center gala © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Named for the man who has represented some of Hollywood’s finest stars, the Burton Moss Hollywood Golden Era Award pays tribute to film legends who may not have been honored adequately during their lifetimes, and whose names and legacy are in danger of becoming forgotten by newer generations of filmgoers. The award itself, an original work of art, was created by celebrated sculptor Edwina Sandys, who also attended the event, is a granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill.

Presenting the award to Wagner, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, who had received the first award on behalf of her mother, Rita Hayworth, said she had devoted her life as a spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Association, working for a cure, andnoted that among the many programs offered at the Gold Coast Arts Center (programs “from womb to tomb” in art, music, performance) are Making Memories a program that serves those with Alzheimer’s and memory impairment.

Gold Coast Arts Center/Gold Coast Film Festival Executive Director Regina Gil with actor Jill St. John, sculptor Edwina Sandys, honoree actor Robert Wagner, and his daughter, Courtney Wagner and Jon Kaiman, co-president of the Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Proceeds from the benefit support the Arts Center’s outreach projects including Making Memories, as well as ArtReach, a program that brings Arts Center faculty and programs to underserved schoolchildren and others, to enrich their curriculum with arts education in the areas of ceramics, painting, music, dance, and chess.

The gala kicks off this year’s Gold Coast International Film Festival, taking place November 2 – 13 at various venues in North Hempstead, Long Island. The festival this year features 80 films over 10 days. (Tickets and information at www.goldcoastfilmfestival.org).

Since 2011, the Gold Coast International Film Festival has brought the latest Hollywood hits and Indie favorites to standing-room-only audiences throughout the fabled Gold Coast of Long Island and beyond. Add A-list celebrities and unforgettable events to the mix, and it’s easy to see why the Gold Coast International Film Festival has become the “go to” festival for film buffs and the public; (it is also the last major film festival on the East Coast before Awards season). The Gold Coast International Film Festival is produced by the not-for-profit Gold Coast Arts Center.

The Gold Coast Arts Center is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting the arts through education, exhibition, performance, and outreach. Located on the North Shore of Long Island, it has brought the arts to tens of thousands of people throughout the region for over 20 years. Among the Center’s offerings are its School for the Arts, which holds year-round classes in visual and performing arts for students of all ages and abilities; a free public art gallery; a concert and lecture series; film screenings and discussions; the annual Gold Coast International Film Festival; and initiatives that focus on senior citizens and underserved communities. These initiatives include artist residencies, after-school programs, school assemblies, teacher-training workshops, and parent-child workshops. The Gold Coast Arts Center is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education program, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. More information can be found at www.goldcoastarts.org.

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Arts & Entertainment, Long Island travel, Museums and Exhibits

URBAN POP Exhibit Brings 5 Notable Artists to Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck, Long Island

May 22, 2018 krubin723

*Lenny Achan, Michelle Carollo, Will Power, Shiro and Luis “Zimad” Lamboy with Gold Coast Arts Center director Regina Gil and curator Jude Amsel © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

Some of the most illustrious artists of Urban Pop are on view a short distance from the mean streets of the city: The Gold Coast Arts Center has again chosen to showcase graffiti, street artists and media savants of urban culture in its exhibit, “URBAN POP,” on view through September 8. Fans had a chance to meet the five featured artists at an opening reception, May 20, at the Great Neck, Long Island gallery.

“The art scene has developed significantly since the 1970s with the introduction of using popular culture (pop art) as a source of inspiration,” writes exhibit curator and gallery director Jude Amsel. “Many contemporary artists have now merged other modern influences such as street art, graffiti, architecture and urban culture into their work.

*Gold Coast Arts Center Director Regina Gil with artist Meres One in front of his painting, at the opening of URBAN POP exhibit © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Among the artists featured in Urban Pop, include Shiro, whose controversial work appeared on the murals at 5Pointz, a warehouse complex and graffiti mecca in Queens, and Luis “Zimad” Lamboy. Their work, along with several other artists, was subsequently destroyed when whitewashed by the property owner and was the subject of a prolonged court battle, ultimately decided in favor of the artists, awarding them $6.75 million. On hand at the reception was Jonathan “Meres One” Cohen, one of the most prominent graffiti artists and a leader at 5Pointz, who has painted sections of the arts center.

Works by Luis “Zimad” Lamboy, Will Power, Shiro, Michelle Carollo and Lenny Achan are on view at URBAN POP at the Gold Coast Arts Center Gallery, Great Neck, Long Island through Sept. 8, 2018 © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Shiro actually provided the theme for the show, gallery director and curator Jude Amsel said. “She is marking her 20^th anniversary as a graffiti artist. She is like Lady Pink – one of the world’s most famous graffiti artists.”

Her paintings feature a consistent character – her alter ego.

“Since I was little, I have been deaf in one ear. I wasn’t communicating with people. My family kept moving for my father’s job. It was hard to make new friends, so I kept drawing a character – my imaginary friend. I wasn’t lonely with my friend. Now I travel all over world by myself – India, Brazil, China – 18 countries. I can travel by myself because I have my best friend,” says Shiro.

She leaves her images like an “I was here” stamp in the places she visits.

“People call me to do the murals, big murals, with my character, my best friend. I leave her on the wall in the country. I keep creating my character.”

She covers her face when I photograph her with her painting. “I don’t want to worry about how I look, I want people to see my art,” she says.

*Shiro with one of her New York City, hip-hop inspired paintings at the opening of URBAN POP at Gold Coast Art Center gallery, Great Neck, Long Island © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Shiro grew up in Tokyo and began her career as an aerosol artist in 1998. “As a young artist, I fell in love with hip-hop. In Japan, the only way to get information about hip-hop culture was to read books, watch videos, and listen to music. I used to go to clubs in Japan every weekend with friends and other artists to dance and paint, all the while imagining what it would be like to experience the movement in NYC at the time.”

She came to New York in 2002, inspired by a film, “Wild Style” to see the Bronx.

In celebration of her 20^th anniversary as an aerosol artist, she began her “90’s project’” by painting walls internationally.

She’s been living in New York for the past four years, “the city I used to dream about.”

*Luis “Zimad” Lamboy discusses his multi-media work in URBAN POP at Gold Coast Art Center gallery, Great Neck, Long Island © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Luis “Zimad” Lamboy is showing pieces created for the show that draw upon his early career. “In the mid-80’s I discovered creating graffiti, collage and mixed media on paper which wasn’t being done at the time by any of my peers. It’s been awhile since I’ve gone back to doing this style of work. I felt it necessary in order to move forward in my career to look back and fine tune what I had started. The new works are vibrating with color and life and feel as it tells a story of walls I’ve done, characters I’ve created and the many people I’ve had the honor of meeting and calling brothers and sisters.

*“Red Devil” (2014) by Luis “Zimad” Lamboy on view at URBAN POP at the Gold Coast Arts Center Gallery, Great Neck © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Michelle Carollo’s major work, “Steampunk Davis,” is a large-scale (8’ x 8’ x 4’) 3-D construction, inspired by 1930s modernist painter, Stuart Davis. “This is an homage to his work.” It’s constructed of the discarded junk she found around her Brooklyn studio.

You feel the power, a kinetic energy of the piece.

“My work explores gender, pop-culture, and domestic industry,” she writes. “It uses humor and color to capture the energy, power and tension in contemporary culture. By using a series of symbols, figures and built handicraft, my work blends the playful with the serious.

*Michelle Carollo with “Steampunk Davis” at the opening of URBAN POP at Gold Coast Art Center gallery, Great Neck, Long Island © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

“I draw on multiple references from cartoons to graffiti and entertainment, as well as technology and the history of art. I find there is something completely ridiculous and pleasurable in making deceptively simple imagery. The result is a visual mash-up that remixes spontaneous information with a type of balanced order.”

The drawings are her studies for the larger piece to “help figure what color, patterns, shapes,” she says.

She also is exhibiting a quilt, demonstrating the versatility of the application of her kinetic scope. “I just started working with fabric.”

Carollo, who conquers “one white wall at a time,” has exhibited at MOMA PS1.

Lenny Achan’s style reflects his experiences growing up in New York City as a graffiti and street artist in the early 1990s. The works look as if origami were sucked into a canvas, but it is an illusion: he cuts New York City transit maps into precise shapes and assembles them, adding transparent spray paint as shadow to complete the illusion of 3-D.

“People looking at NYC transit maps likely means they are stressed out. I wanted to give people a reason to smile.”

*Lenny Achan with “Cityboy” in URBAN POP at Gold Coast Art Center gallery, Great Neck, Long Island © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Achan describes himself as “an artist and inventor, influenced by my time growing up in NYC” but embracing experiences outside of the traditional art world to enhance and influence his creative expression.

“I am a student of the laws of nature and sacred geometry and draw from the complexities of everyday life to create pieces that help audiences reflect on more simple times. My philosophy of modern art and the street art movement has been heavily influenced through studying and experiencing global disruption of various commercial and political industries. Art in all forms is a vehicle for innovation and communication. I used everything around me to create and share my view of the world.”

*“CityBoy” by Lenny Achan on view at URBAN POP at the Gold Coast Arts Center Gallery, Great Neck © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

He says, “I wanted to use sacred geometry to mimic life. Geometry is sacred to the philosophy of origami – shapes, whether a person or a bumble bee – are shapes of geometry.

“It is formulaic – they mimic and respect the complexity of math, science, biology, while at same time” break down to simpler, essential shapes.

Achan clearly achieved his desired impact: a woman reflecting on his NYC Transit Map dog, “Cityboy,” exclaims how it brought her pure joy.

Will Power is striving to make INV8ERS an iconic figure for urban art culture worldwide © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Will Power, a self-taught contemporary artist who was influenced by graffiti and hip-hop culture, describes the INV8DERS series of works in the exhibit as “a hybrid fusion of a New York City pigeon with spray paint can. The pigeon represents Graffiti and Street artists, the spray paint can head represents Contemporary Urban Art.” He is striving to make INV8ERS an iconic figure for urban art culture worldwide. He describes the vibrant colorful background as his foundation, his evolution from graffiti. “the ability to combine these various colors is a skill learned from many years of being a graffiti artist. The INV8DERS are a perfect amalgam of graffiti, street art and fine art.”

*URBAN POP exhibit curator Jude Amsel says the five artists “bring a myriad of visual cultural influences to their fine art practice.” © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

These artists “bring a myriad of visual cultural influences to their fine art practice,” said Gold Coast Arts Center’s Gallery Director and exhibit Curator Jude Amsel, Some hone their skills on the street, others working in the studio find their version of popular urban art, some having a unique language of their own not categorized within a specific movement. However, each one of the artists offers something unique and different as to their expression of Urban Pop.”

For more information, visit http://goldcoastarts.org/urban-pop/ or call 516-829-2570.

The Gold Coast Arts Center is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting the arts through education, exhibition, performance and outreach. Located on the North Shore of Long Island, it has brought the arts to tens of thousands of people throughout the region for more than 20 years. Among the Center’s offerings are its School for the Arts, which holds year-round classes in visual and performing arts for students of all ages and abilities; a free public art gallery; a concert and lecture series; film screenings and discussions; the annual Gold Coast International Film Festival; and initiatives that focus on senior citizens and underserved communities. These initiatives include artist residencies, after-school programs, school assemblies, teacher-training workshops and parent-child workshops. The Gold Coast Arts Center is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education program, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Gold Coast Arts Center, 113 Middle Neck Road, Great Neck, NY 11021, 516-829-2570, www.goldcoastarts.org.

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Arts & Entertainment

All Types of Kinds Wins 2018 Your Big Break Talent Competition at Gold Coast Arts Center, Long Island

April 22, 2018 krubin723 1 Comment

*All Types of Kinds, the 2018 “Your Big Break” Talent Competition winner, performing at Gold Coast Arts Center’s Acoustic Café, Great Neck, Long Island © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

All Types of Kinds is the 2018 “Your Big Break” Talent competition winner at the Gold Coast Arts Center’s Acoustic Café, organized by the Gold Coast Arts Center, Love Revolution Org, and the Rick Eberle Agency.

The band was among the top five finalists that also included two other bands – 37 Stripes and Psychopompus – and two singer/songwriters – Kaylee Shahira and Lydia Von Hof – who had won their knockout rounds held earlier this year. They performed in front of a sell-out audience and judges from the music business including producers, radio and television personalities and music business executives.

The competition really does provide a “big break”: as the talent competition winner, All Types of Kinds will have the opportunity to open for national acts at major local venues like The Paramount; recording time at DCITY Studios; a feature on Reverbnation.com; musical equipment from All Music Inc. and ZOOM North America; and public relations and social media campaign, booking and label services consultation with the Rick Eberle Agency.

All Types of Kinds, the 2018 “Your Big Break” Talent Competition winner, with judges and organizers at Gold Coast Arts Center’s Acoustic Café, Great Neck, Long Island © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

All Types of Kinds, a New York City-based Alternative band consisting of guitarists Billy Conahan, Ray Rubio, and Rocco Stoker, along with percussionist Berk O, won with their polished precision, sweet harmony, musicianship, artistry, versatility and originality in their smart lyrics. As a group, they have performed from folk to rap and other genres in between, and it all came out in this performance. Their music and shows reflect the band’s diverse background: they all are singer/songwriters with an extensive repertoire of songs and experience performing in musical theater, stand-up comedy, and as actors. This all comes together in how they engage the audience, giving a very entertaining performance.

*Psychopompous, which formed at Great Neck South High School, performing in Finals of “Your Big Break” Talent Competition at Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

First formed at Great Neck South High/Middle School in 2010, Psychopompous is the most recent nominal iteration of the musical project formed by singer and guitarist Justin Kelly, percussionist Beni Hahitti, and bassist Maximillian Nero. The three created Psychopompous through a mutual interest primarily in progressive rock, and then expanded into an unending plethora of musical interests that continues to grow at an alarming, and often frustrating rate. Their music has taken notes from progressive rock, heavy metal, alternative, blues, funk, psychedelia, Gregorian chant, Tibetan throat singing, and occasionally whale songs. They have been known in the past for their sincere love of technical music, experimentation, improvisation, and their unbridled willingness to play music nobody wants to hear.

*37 Stripes brought out a huge fan club for their performance in the finals of the “Your Big Break” Talent Competition at Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The band 37 Stripes, formed in the fall of 2016, consists of 8^th and 9^th graders. The members were introduced at the School of Music and Art on Long Island and quickly connected with one another and settled on musical upheaval as an alternative expression. 37 Stripes have been writing their music and playing at festivals and venues around New York City. Band members are Manhasset residents Andrew Hahn, who plays Fender bass, sax, and keyboard; Oscar Cellura on Fender guitars, and keyboard; and percussionist Zach Levine, a resident of Syosset, who plays the drums. The band has played at the renowned “Bitter End” in Greenwich Village and Mulcahy’s in Wantagh, NY. 37 Stripes were also finalists in the Town of Oyster Bay’s Battle of the Bands and the Morgan Park (Glen Cove) Summer Music Festival. They were invited to appear live on Rick Eberle’s “Rising Stars” radio program.

*Kaylee Shahira performing in “Your Big Break” Talent Competition at Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Kaylee Shahira is a young, passionate indie-pop artist with a killer sound who hails from northwest Indiana. Shahira loves writing about the questions nobody can answer — living with mental illness, personal life philosophies, and the intricacies of being a social animal. Shahira exudes promise as an emerging artist. She performed her original song, “Dime,” which contemplates the notion that a person changes every 10 years.

*“Your Big Break” Talent Competition at Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Lydia von Hof is a 16-year-old classically trained pianist, singer who ranges from jazz to opera, and, composer, and since her first appearance at Your Big Break, where a judge encouraged her to writer her own song lyrics, has become a passionate singer-songwriter. piano player, and songwriter whose song and performance just won first prize at the Young Performers showcase at the Hard Rock Café in Boston. The Commack High School junior performed as a soloist at Madison Square Garden at a New York Knicks halftime show and is the 2016 winner of Long Island’s Got Talent. Aside from singing pop, jazz, R&B, Broadway, and opera, Lydia has performed classical piano solos at both Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She has been a returning musical guest on PATV’s “The Brick Wall.” She performed four of her own songs – evocative of Adele, who is one of her musical inspirations, along with Michael Jackson.

*Budhist Priest bring the audience on a historical musical tour at the Gold Coast Acoustic Café © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The headliner for the show was Budist Priest, which presented a stunning historical tour of music that went back to the “rock” of its day, in the 1600s, to Johann Pachelbel’s baroque Canon, and to “future”.

Rick Eberle of Rick Eberle Agency, the competition organizer, (center) with judges of Your Big Break Talent Competition: Mark Ambrosino, producer, artist at Sojourn Records; Jerry Lembo, artist manager, radio promotion;; David Caggiano – producer, artist and Guy Brogna – promoter, artist at All Music Inc © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

The Gold Coast Arts Center is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting the arts through education, exhibition, performance and outreach. Located on the North Shore of Long Island, it has brought the arts to tens of thousands of people throughout the region for over 20 years. Among the Center’s offerings are its School for the Arts, which holds year-round classes in visual and performing arts for students of all ages and abilities; a free public art gallery; a concert and lecture series; film screenings and discussions; the annual Gold Coast International Film Festival; and initiatives that focus on senior citizens and underserved communities. These initiatives include artist residencies, after-school programs, school assemblies, teacher-training workshops and parent-child workshops. The Gold Coast Arts Center is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education program, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. More information can be found at www.goldcoastarts.org.

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Arts, Arts & Entertainment, Cultural travel, Uncategorized

‘Collective Consciousness’ on View at Gold Coast Arts Center Focuses on Responsibility for Environment

March 8, 2018 krubin723 1 Comment

“Collective Conscious” Curator Jude Amsel, Gold Coast Arts Center Director Regina Gil, NYS Assemblyman Tony D’Urso with artists Beth Williams Garrett, Nancy Gesimondo, Yoon Cho, Charles Cohen, Lauren Skelly Bailey and Linda Cunningham © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

“Nature has been inspiring artists for centuries, and its beauty has been captured in paintings, sculptures, photographs and a variety of other medium. But some artists take the relationship between art and the environment a step further, creating works from nature itself or producing artworks that make bold statements about the natural world and the imprint mankind has left on it.” This is what curator Jude Amsel was looking for when she put together the exhibition, COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS, on view at the Gold Coast Arts Center Gallery in Great Neck, Long Island through April 1.

The seven artists whose works are represented “are commenting on man’s relationship with our planet. These artists have the power to make environmentalism a priority and bring green initiatives to the forefront of cultural conversations,” she stated.

“With all the gloom and doom, we can feel sad with what’s happening in the world. But these artists bring an awareness,” a literal consciousness of our role and responsibility, Amsel said at the Artists’ Reception, March 4. The viewer is left with a sense of optimism that man’s better impulses will rise to the fore.

Yoon Cho’s work – multi-media performance art which combines video superimposed with digitized drawings – is the starkest commentary on this theme: her project was inspired by a difficult pregnancy after 10 years of marriage and the birth of her son, she and her husband traveled to barren landscapes to comment on extinction and procreation, the images of life forcing its way through.

Beth Williams Garrett created feminized Buddha head sculptures out of plastic bags.

Linda Cunningham turned the blighted industrial waterfront of the South Bronx into striking images on torn, furled canvas.

Nancy Gesimondo found solace in creating assemblages of natural materials, where mussel shells appear as butterflies, a metaphorical prayer flying to heaven; water chestnut seedpods are like flying bats, and peacock feathers are like tall grass.

Lauren Skelly Bailey re-creates the natural world of coral reefs in meticulous glazed ceramics, mimicking the surprise you have when you touch coral, which seem to be fluid and flowing to discover they are rock hard.

Charles Cohen uses realistic photography to get reduce household products to the shape and color of their plastic containers to force a different perspective.

Luba Lukova, whose graphic artistry can be seen in the New York Times, brings her timely commentary to an image of a green plant shielded by a hand as bombs fall, in her silkscreen, “Peace and Planet” (2015).

What is so interesting is to see such variety of media and approaches that come together to the essential message of human impact on the natural world: a collective consciousness of our responsibility.

Here’s more from the artists about their works:

*Artist Lauren Skelly Bailey is exhibiting ceramics in “Collective Conscious” at the Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Lauren Skelly Bailey’s ceramics are uncanny in the way they so realistically, meticulously yet artistically represent coral. You appreciate the beauty of nature’s own design. And like nature itself which is deceptively complex (think of a wasp’s nest), her work is exceptionally technical. “Stacking Up” (2016) for example, is crafted of porcelain, stoneware, slip, glaze, resin and flock – the pieces are each fired five to seven times. There are pieces gilded with real gold on the last firing.

She began her arts education studying painting and cartooning at Adelphi, graduating with a BA and MA, then went on to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) to earn her MFA. She produced many of these ceramics during a residency at the Museum of Arts & Design and had two grants from the NYS Council for the Arts.

“My work explores methods of making assemblage sculptures, conglomerations, installations, and figurines. There’s that sensation of falling for process, the chase of finding the unexpected and learning how it occurs. From that knowledgeI make intentional decisions regarding textural surfaces, glazes, slips and clay applications, changing the context of the piece from a study to a solution. I respond to changes and observe balance in my work, seeking to push an uneasy tension between materials and form. Each new sculpture is a moment, something new that has been achieved or understood, taking me further into my experience with ceramics.” (laurenskellybailey.com)

Nancy Gesimondo (left) with curator Jude Amsel. Gesimondo’s assemblages in “Collective Conscious” evoke Native American reverence for nature at the Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The first reaction to Nancy Gesimondo’s assemblages is how they evoke Native American references. Nancy is from Sunnyside, Queens.

“My work is an exploration of materiality and science that results in new visceral narratives. I create assemblages comprised of natural materials such as shells, feathers, seedpods, semi-precious stones, rocks and crystal formations.The juxtaposition of these found elements results in surreal landscapes, imaginal creatures and hybrid specimens that aim to suggest the exploration and sense of mystery of an archeologist assembling vestiges of a distant past with no true reference of their origin.

“My work is a reflection of my appreciation of nature’s beauty and diversity, as well as my concern for its decline. The delicate fragments imbue the work with an ethereal quality that portends a futuristic glimpse of the place we call home.”

Her assemblages draw upon natural materials she regularly collects – feathers, shells, seedpods, semi-precious stones, rocks and crystal formations. “It shows a reverence for Earth.”

“I’ve been collecting feathers forever – they are like little signs from beyond to me.”

She added, “I let the materials guide me towards the image. I very rarely see the composition in advance.”

The overall feeling is of tranquility, a peacefulness, a poetic aesthetic. The natural elements are used as metaphors.

“A Winged Victory for the Sullen” (2016) is an assemblage with amethyst crystal, iridescent feathers, and water chestnut seedpods (collected at Beacon NY), that look like flying birds. It is mounted on 300 lb watercolor paper, and she explained how she had to puncture roofing nails from the back, then glue the seedpods on.

“Evening Prayers III,” (2017) draws upon mussels that look like butterflies, and a strip of peacock features that look like tall grass. “It’s difficult to find mussels that are still together, but after my father died, I wanted to go to the beach. I went to Long Beach where I know there are mussels, but on this day, I never saw so many whole mussels as then. I collected four bags worth. I felt it was a sign from my father, “Abundance. Don’t worry.”

“The shells poetically morph into butterflies. They are like prayers – wishes and wants that fly to heaven.,”

“In my work, there is always some poetry.” (www.nancygesimondo.com)

*Linda Cunningham’s torn and furled canvases are a commentary on South Bronx blight on view at “Collective Consciousness” at the Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Linda Cunningham makes an artful plea on behalf of South Bronx in her series, “South Bronx Waterfront Sagas-shards: The New Vision” (2016).

“Collaged canvas with torn edges convey contradictions documented with photo-transferred images, layered with acrylic and pastel revealing a broken South Bronx history, an urban renewal tragedy, an area once the retreat of choice for fresh air and greenery. The shards of information and vistas evoke the Port Morris harbor where barges once docked and youth swam off a pier in the East River. The beautiful open vistas are now inaccessible to the residents of the Mott Haven and Port Morris areas of the South Bronx, abandoned and dominated by deteriorating remains, rotting remnants of piers, power stations and City Waste transfer stations.”

Cunningham’s work centers upon time, transience, contradictions, and compelling environmental concerns juxtaposed against industry and urban blight.

The canvas itself is twisted and tortured in its way – not at all the neat rectangles that fit into frames.

“Life doesn’t come in a convenient box – I can’t work in a square (or rectangle). Life is one torn edge to another.”

The irony is that she makes the South Bronx blight beautiful. (www.lindalcunningham.com)

*Beth Williams Garrett uses plastic bags to create her feminized Buddha head sculptures on view at “Collective Consciousness” at the Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Beth Williams Garrett, who studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and has shown her artwork up and down the East Coast, said, “I was a painter for 30 years, until 2010, when I felt the need to make sculpture. I was searching for a suitable sculpting material, I stumbled upon using plastic bags as a medium… Plastic bags were being thrown away – that’s no good for environment. They present themselves to me as a material to make sculpture with.”

“The inspiration for my first sculptures came from my travels to Buddhist temples in Japan and ancient ruins in Rome.”

Indeed, the sculptures fashioned of plastic bags evoke Buddha, but then there is a twist. “I have always felt my work was autobiographical, as a woman and focused on the female figure.

The result is a feminized Buddha – “girl Buddhas” she said.

Her skill as a painter comes through in the way she uses the colors and patterns in the plastic bags to great effect. One of the pieces draws on both her painting and the sculpting.

“Since then, I have been exploring what I can do with the plastic bags. My newest endeavors have been combining the 3-dimensional work with the 2-dimensional work as relief/multi media pieces and I continue making heads as I love how the plastic bags lend themselves to creating facial expressions.”

“It happened by accident in the studio. I propped the plastic bag head on a canvas to take a picture and decided to combine the two. I usually paint bodies without a head, so it made me laugh to make plastic bag without the body. (bethwilliamsgarrettart.webs.com)

Yoon Cho says her son was the inspiration for her multi-media “Desert Walk Photo and Video Series,” which she undertook with her husband, visiting 20 sites in four states on view at “Collective Consciousness” at the Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Yoon Cho’s Desert Walk Photo and Video Series explores the connection with our environments by featuring America’s diverse desert landscapes with superimposed digital drawings of various biological life forms over the artist’s walk performance. The silhouette graphics of biological life forms such as cells, pollen, reproductive organs, embryos, and skeletons in the sky tell a story of the cycle of life and our co-existence with the Earth.

Cho’s personal journey from a difficult pregnancy to motherhood and upbringing in a family of physicians encouraged her to examine the relationship between the biological life forms and their habitats. The Desert Walk encapsulates beauty, destruction, and preservation of the land we live in.

The work is based on photographs from 20 different sites in four states (New Mexico, California, Nevada and Arizona). The final scene is at the Array where astronomers listen for signs of life from outer space. “That represents the future,” she says.

Her work was supported by the Puffin Foundation and New York State Foundation of Arts. (www.yooncho.com)

Charles Cohen, with Gold Coast Arts Center director Regina Gil, with his photographic collage, “Executive Function,” on view at “Collective Consciousness” at the Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Charles Cohen uses photography to change perspective.

“From the threshold between participation and observation, I break with day to day experience. Familiar with the ethnographer’s dilemma, I embrace this betwixt state as the key to being human: we act as protagonist and critic in our own lives so that we can bridge the gap between individual and collective.

“My work exposes reductive dualities and challenges the ordinary relationship between perceiver and perceived by provoking reflexive thought… My work explores a range of subjects, literal and figurative, in an embrace of liminality and in confrontation with a binary view. The result transforms the subject/object relationship from real to metaphor and liberates a state of being—one. (www.promulgator.com)

*Luba Lukova’s “Peace and Planet” (2015) on view at “Collective Consciousness” at the Gold Coast Arts Center © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Luba Lukova creates images that she hopes will catalyze action and change the world. Her thought-provoking posters address essential themes of humanity and injustice worldwide. Her messages help viewers develop empathetic understanding for social and cultural issues through indelible metaphors and an economy of line, color, and text. Lukova’s work is included in the permanent collections of MoMa; Denver Art Museum; Bibliothèque nationale de France; Hong Kong Heritage Museum; Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée, La Louvière, Belgium; the Library of Congress; and the World Bank, Washington, D.C. (www.lukova.net)

The Gold Coast Arts Center is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the arts through education, exhibition, performance and outreach. It offers classes for tots to seniors in art, music, dance and performance;, events, gallery, film festivals and outreach programs.

The Gold Coast Arts Center, 113 Middle Neck Rd, Great Neck, NY, 516-829-2570 or www.GoldCoastArts.org.

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