Tag Archives: Long Island arts

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.

_________________________

© 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.

_________________________

© 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.

_____________________________

© 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, 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

_____________________________

© 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, 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.

____________________

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.

_____________________________

Arts, Arts & Entertainment, Attractions, Cultural travel, Culture

Nassau County Museum of Art Becomes Destination for Arts Education with Opening of Manes Center

August 7, 2017 krubin723

Ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Manes Family Art & Education Center with Dr. Harvey Manes and grandchildren. The new center gives the Nassau County Museum of Art, housed on the former Childs Frick estate in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island, a new dimension in arts education, spanning ages and abilities © 2017 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

Housed in what was Childs Frick’s natural history laboratory where he studied paleontology, the newly opened Manes Family Art & Education Center on the grounds of the Nassau County Museum of Art – Frick’s former estate – gives the museum a new dimension in arts education and appreciation.

The Manes Center, named in recognition of Museum Trustee Dr. Harvey Manes and the Manes Foundation’s $1 million gift, gives the museum the space to offer a dynamic and creative environment in which audiences of all ages and abilities can find creative engagement through a variety of activities, classes and projects. This includes new hands-on programs for children as young as 3, adults from beginners to skilled, and an ambitious curriculum for autistic individuals.

The environment is special: Childs Frick, the son of Henry Clay Frick, was a vertebrate paleontologist and a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History. The center has repurposed Frick’s labs into art “labs,” each dedicated to a specific type of art learning, to address the multiple learning styles, interests and abilities of adults and children: Hands-On Studio Lab, Indoor/Outdoor Lab, Reading Resource Lab and Design Tech Lab, as well as additional exhibit space.

This means that for the first time, the Museum will be able to offer hands-on multi-day workshops across the visual arts disciplines.

Dr. Harvey Manes, with Nassau County Museum of Art Director Karl E. Willers and Board President Angela Susan Anton, at the opening of the Manes Family Art & Education Center. “Art is my passion,” Dr. Manes said. “I believe in promoting peace through art and education.” © 2017 Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

“Family programs at the Manes Center provide children and the adults in their lives the opportunity to take time from their busy schedules to reconnect while talking about and making art together. Each week we offer projects that encourage curiosity and experimentation, and creative thinking through a variety of experiences and materials inspired by current exhibitions.”

“Before, we always scrambled for space in order to run programs at the museum,” commented NCMA Director Karl E. Willers at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, August 3. “This facility allows us to enhance and expand all kinds of classes… Programs can be geared to exhibits as well as to open to the surrounding landscape. Many art programs integrate science and the natural world. It adds a new dimension to our educational offerings – extended hands-on workshops, more events going on simultaneously spanning age and ability groups, when before we were limited by the space availability in the mansion.”

The building, which was designed for Charles Frick’s paleontology research (the specimens he collected are now at the Museum of Natural History), is a series of laboratories that are being repurposed for making art in all its forms. The floors are finished to accommodate workshops and there are sinks!

“We can offer proper professional art spaces for people to look at and make art in contemporary studio facility,” said Reem Hussein, who was brought in to manage the center. We are bringing in technology – i-Pads to create art with technology. But we are mindful of people who want traditional art making.

“These are programs we don’t offer now. We will able to offer more series programs, rather than one-shots and lectures.”

She said that the rooms are called “labs” to pay homage to Frick.

NYS Assemblymembers Charles Lavine and Michaelle C. Solages, and NYS Senator Carl L Marcellino with NCMA trustee, Dr. Harvey Manes whose $1 million donation made the Manes Family Art & Education Center possible © 2017 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The New American Garden Inaugural Exhibit

The public is invited to preview the Manes Center and take in its inaugural exhibit, “The New American Garden: The Landscape Architecture of Oehme, van Sweden.”

Organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, The New American Garden is a traveling photographic exhibition which chronicles the careers and influence of Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden who revolutionized landscape architecture with the creation of a type of garden characterized by large swaths of grasses and fields of perennials. The gardens are the penultimate merger of man and nature, and the ultimate in “installation” art’s ephemeral quality. Indeed, 10 of the gardens that are immortalized in the photographs are gone, and many others are in jeopardy.

During this introductory period, through September 7, admission to the Manes Center is free (free admission offer does not include the main building, the Saltzman Fine Art Building).

The building now looks as a low-level white box, but that will soon change. The pop/surrealist modern artist Kenny Scharf is being invited to paint the exterior. After that, it is anticipated that the landscape architects Oehme, van Sweden will create a new garden.

Pop Artist Kenny Scharf, at the opening of his exhibit at the Nassau County Museum of Art in 2016, will transform the exterior of the new Manes Family Art & Education Center © 2017 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The focus on gardens for the inaugural exhibit at the Manes Center is also appropriate for this grand estate.

Most of the 145 acres originally belonged to poet, lawyer, conservationist, political activist, patron of the arts and preservationist William Cullen Bryant, who settled in Roslyn in 1843. The long-time editor of the New York Post built is home, Cedarmore, and founded Roslyn’s public library. In 1862, he built a cottage for his friend and fellow poet, Miss Jerusha Dewey (you can see the cottage when you explore the hiking trails on the grounds). In 1900, Lloyd Stephens Bryce purchased Bryant’s ‘Upland Farm’ and commissioned architect Ogden Codman, Jr. to design Bryce House, the present mansion. Henry Clay Frick, co-founder of US Steel Corporation purchased Bryce House in 1919 as a gift for his son, Childs Frick, a Princeton graduate who became a vertebrate paleontologist and naturalist.

For museum-goers, the estate grounds also offer:

Sculpture Park: Approximately 30 works, many of them monumental in size, by renowned artists including Fernando Botero, Tom Otterness, George Rickey and Mark DiSuvero among others, are situated to interact with nature on the museum’s magnificent 145-acre property.

Walking Trails: The museum’s 145 acres include many marked nature trails through the woods, perfect for family hikes or independent exploration.

Gardens: From restored formal gardens of historic importance to quiet little nooks for dreaming away an afternoon, the museum’s 145 acre property features many lush examples of horticultural arts. Come view our expanded gardens and beautiful new path to the museum.

*Childs Frick’s mansion home is now the Saltzman Fine Art Building of the Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, Long Island © 2017 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Today, Frick’s mansion is the Saltzman Fine Arts Building, home to the Nassau County Museum of Art, which has put on world-class exhibitions and has a notable collection, including 150 Tiffany paintings and drawings which were bequeathed to the museum.

Currently on exhibit in the Saltzman Fine Art Building (through November 5, 2017)

“New York, New York”: From its earliest years, New York City was the stage on which the transformation of America played out, reflecting economic and historic upheavals that led to the city’s place as the financial and art capital of the world. This exhibition, guest curated by Director Emerita Constance Schwartz, portrays the city’s grit and glamour, its excitement and bustle, the heartbeat of a great metropolis, through more than 140 works by artists such as John Sloan, Reginald Marsh, Childe Hassam, Red Grooms, Robert Henri, Fairfield Porter, Berenice Abbott, Milton Avery and Georgia O’Keeffe among many others.

“Glamour Icons: Marc Rosen”: Through the work of the award-winning designer Marc Rosen, Glamour Icons celebrates fragrance and cosmetic packaging as an art form. This retrospective spanning the designer’s 40-year career includes many of his most iconic designs as well as some vintage 20th-century perfume bottles from Rosen’s personal collection. The designer’s work has been recognized with many industry awards and is also in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Musée de La Mode in Paris.

Family Sundays – 1– 4 pm (free with admission): Be inspired by an exhibition based gallery conversation, then explore new art materials and learn new art-based vocabulary and ideas in the studio with our museum educator.

Super Family Sundays – 1-4 pm (admission plus $10 materials fee):

Families immerse themselves in artmaking and exploring the Museum, the grounds, and sculpture collection during Super Family Sundays. Multiple activities are offered in collaboration with teaching artists in a variety of media, from performance to monumental cardboard constructions. Themes connecting the artmaking activities are inspired by the art on view in our galleries, the Museum’s history or the changing seasons on display in its forests and gardens.

Preview of Educational Programs at Manes Center

Among the arts education programs that will be available at the Manes Center beginning this fall:

Early Childhood Programs: Programs for young children and their adult companions at the Manes Center are all about discovery. Both in the galleries and in the art studio, children find opportunity for self-expression, socialization, and experimentation, through creative play and exploration through open ended developmentally appropriate experiences. Looking at and talking about art fosters visual literacy in young children.

Programs include:

Story Time for 3 to 5 year olds, featuring gallery exploration and hands-on art activities.

Young Artists (ages 3-5) programs for children and their adult companions consist of hands-on activities designed to experiment and become familiar with art materials and processes.

An Outdoor Classroom program will offer guided and self-guided activities for children to encourage the exploration of the natural environment through experiences that make the connection between art and science. Activities are designed to encourage open air exploration and imaginative play.

*New outdoor education programs will encourage children to explore NCMA’s natural environment and make the connection between art and science © 2017 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

A drawing class geared to children 8-11 years old, to learn the rules of traditional drawing by practicing line, shading, and perspective through drawing in the studio and gallery and using experimental materials.

A program tentatively titled “Imagine, Design & Build,” for children 11-15 to experience the design process through sketching and building as they dive deep into creative thinking and problem-solving to explore the connections between design, art, science, and technology.

A program for teens 13-17 is aimed at supporting high school students who are preparing portfolios as part of their college applications. Group and individual instruction focus on elements and principles of art and design through application to students’ own work and conversations about art work in the museum’s galleries. Student will have the opportunity for work with live models, critique sessions, and portfolio reviews.

Adult Programs

Hands-on studio programs are being designed for adults of all levels of art making experience, taught by experienced artists. The programs focus on group and individual projects to help adults explore and learn art skills and processes, and have opportunities for personal expression. Adults will learn techniques of drawing & painting, sculpture, and printmaking and have opportunities to draw from live models.

“The Creative Process” dovetails with every changing exhibition in the Manes Center’s contemporary art gallery: visitors are invited to create in response to the art on view through hands on activities that focus on artists’ themes, processes, and materials. Projects are designed to pique curiosity and inspire creativity, and gain new insights into the creative process.

Life drawing at the Manes Center will present the opportunity to draw from a live model through gesture sketches and longer duration poses under the guidance of a teaching artist.

Adults can learn the basics of drawing and painting and explore materials such as graphite, charcoal, and conté crayon, watercolor and acrylic paint. Projects will be inspired by art history and current gallery exhibitions.

The center will also offer programs in using digital art tools to create traditional and experimental works of art.

Art Talks for adults invited scholars, academics and exhibiting artists to introduce and discuss topics in the field of art with visitors in an intimate salon style setting.

Programs for Special Needs

Art education programs are also being designed for children, teens and adults with special needs.

One program invites families affected by autism into the galleries and art studio to talk about and make art. Throughout the course of this program parents and caregivers will gain skills in behavioral methods that they can employ when bringing their child into a community setting. Families will join the Art Educator trained in Art Therapy in fun interactive gallery experiences that provide opportunities for everyone to look at and talk about art in a group setting. Then off to the studio for hands on art making activities that encourage experimentation with new materials, processes and creative play.

Another workshop is aimed at building social and vocational skills for teens and young adults with autism through arts-based workshops. During this workshop series, teens will receive hands on training in basic artistic processes that can be translated into practical job skills. Based on current exhibitions in the galleries at Nassau County Museum of Art, these workshops will encourage participants to explore different methods of art making and design and how a museum can be a resource for creative inspiration. Students with autism will have the opportunity to apply their artistic skills and functional academic learning in a real world setting.

Explore picture & art books and related resources about art history and museum exhibitions. This space is equipped with manipulatives and simple drawing materials for young children.

The Manes Center will also be available for birthday parties, with appropriate art project activities. Party bookings are available on Saturdays 12:30 – 2 pm.

*The Nassau County Museum of Art is on the 145-acre grounds of the former Childs Frick estate in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island © 2017 Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Nassau County Museum of Art, consisting of the Saltzman Fine Art Building and The Manes Family Art & Education Center, is located at One Museum Drive in Roslyn Harbor, just off Northern Boulevard, Route 25A, two traffic lights west of Glen Cove Road. The Museum is open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults, $8 for seniors (62 and above) and $4 for students and children (4 to12). During the August 3-September 10 preview of the Manes Center, there is no admission fee (this does not include admission to the Saltzman Fine Art Building). Members are admitted free. Docent-led tours of the exhibition are offered at 2 p.m. each day; tours of the mansion are offered each Saturday at 1 p.m.; meet in the lobby, no reservations needed. Tours are free with museum admission. Family art activities and family tours are offered Sundays from 1 pm; free with museum admission. Call (516) 484-9338, ext. 12 to inquire about group tours. The Museum Store is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Call 516-484-9338 for current exhibitions, events, days/times and directions or log onto nassaumuseum.org.

____________________

© 2017 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

Former Mayor, Now Artist RJ Rosegarten Returns to Great Neck With ‘Lost & Found: the Art of Assemblage’ Exhibit

January 29, 2017 krubin723

*Artist RJ Rosegarten with Jude Amsel, curator of ‘Lost & Found: the Art of Assemblage’ at the Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck © 2017 Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

When RJ Rosegarten left Great Neck 17 years ago, where he had gone to school, raised a family, had a career in advertising and served as Mayor of the Village of Great Neck Plaza, he was finally free to pursue an ambition from childhood: to be an artist.

He returns to the Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck Plaza – which as mayor he helped bring fruition – with a show, “Lost & Found: the Art of Assemblage” which draws upon his strong sense of design and construction. The exhibition is on view through March 12.

“Assemblage involves the thoughtful combination of elements to create something new and original,” states Jude Amsel, the curator who installed the massive exhibit of some 50 works.

RJ Rosegarten (better known by Great Neckers as Bob) claims that the pieces are not intended to hammer home a theme or message or story, that he approaches the work from the point of view of design, color and form, meticulously choosing objects that together form the image he has conceptualized in his mind.

At the end of it, he says, he comes up with a title. “That’s often the most difficult part,” he says.

*“It’s Great to be King” by RJ Rosegarten © 2017 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

His humor comes through with the titles (“it’s Great to be King”), but don’t read in a theme or moral – it’s for the beholder to find your own meaning.

But if the piece is built around an aesthetic, the choice of objects – each with their own meaning – the title, in fact, broadcasts a mood, emotion or message even if was subconsciously in Rosegarten’s mind, or resounds in the viewer’s own head. The design captures your attention, but then you keep going back to explore and discover and your head forms its own patterns and themes.

These aren’t objects. These aren’t randomly selected. Each element is meticulously chosen – sometimes involving longtime searches.

He describes his effort obtaining just the right red delicious apples (so realistic you think they are actual fruit), for his piece, “Legacy of the Red Apple,” (2016). He had two heads that he fused into one, like Siamese twins. Why apples? “In the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge had fruit.”

*Artist RJ Rosegarten with Gold Coast Arts Center Founder/Executive Director Regina Gil and his piece, “Legacy of the Red Apple.” © 2017 Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

He can tell you the provenance of each object in the piece – where he obtained the silver head in “Sarah Silverstone Presents” and how it took a long time before he found just the sunglasses he wanted for the piece, how the drawer it is assembled in came from a factory (the writing is on the side). He sees Sarah as a person, referring to Sarah as “her”. Indeed, the two gauges and thermometer evoke her personhood, even symbolically.

There is a story behind every piece – about how I got there, where the pieces came from – can tell you where every piece came from – glasses – looked for it a long time – looked for a long time where to put – fit on Sarah – gauge, knew where it would go – design them, lay them out, do not glue them, leave for a week, come back and keep looking at them, move around, put pieces in/out, then glue, last stage – once glue, sign name, over – can’t go back and say I wish I put a ball in there.

*“Sarah Silverstone Presents,” by RJ Rosegarten © 2017 Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

“Sarah Silverstone has a twin sister,” he says, explaining that he bought two of the metallic faces. “Sarah represented to me the absolute woman, a sexy woman; her sister is so sexy, every time I pass her, I talk to her, ‘Hope you have a nice day.’”

He has the same personal connection with the “Wizard of Odd” and the “Thought Collector”.

The personal connection is manifest in his work, Dorzi/Dorzi, built around a vinyl record, but not just any 1950s 45rpm. His friend made the label to suggest it was made by the Bobby Randall 3 band. You learn that Bobby Randall, he explains was non-ethnic name Rosegarten was going to use when got out of college and was going into advertising. (He was discouraged from changing his name by his grandmother.) There are 3 hands – for the three band members, in a pose as if they are snapping their fingers to the beat.

*Dorzi/Dorzi by RJ Rosegarten © 2017 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

His grandmother and grandfather appear again in small photographs that are embedded into a series of four “Junk Drawer” works.

Junk Drawers may look like a hodgepodge, but are not random, he says.

“I visualize what junk drawers have,” he says. “Everyone has junk drawers – in bedrooms, kitchens, desk drawer, basement.” He chooses the items that fill the drawers (which he builds) independently, and over time, lays them out and photographs them. “Then I take everything out and glue back the items one by one.”

The Junk Drawer series each has a photograph of grandmother and grandfather at Rockaway Beach.

One of the boxes has a plastic Howdy Doody figure, while another has the Princess character from the show. He says he goes for colors, shapes and looks for holes.

“It’s not nostalgia,” he insists. But as he knows the provenance of every piece – some have personal connection, like the photos of his grandparents and a John Lennon/Imagine photo.

“Every time you look, you see something else.” Or actually, you “find” something new.

*RJ Rosegarten with one of his “Junk Drawers” © 2017 Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

But looking at the items, it is hard not to become nostalgic as you find items that spark memories of your own past. The Junk Drawer series and his Americana series are like mini-Smithsonians of American cultural icons of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and so forth.

Rosegarten says he loves making the Junk Drawers and would customize for someone on commission. “I would go to your house and if you didn’t have the elements I wanted, I would ask if I could use some of mine.”

The pieces he chooses are specific – he combs particular shops (he has his favorites for manikins in the Garment District), antique stores, flea markets, garage and barn sales, which “are entertainment in the country and have become an essential part of my new work with found objects. One day I might find a rusted scythe with a broken wooden handle; the next day a box of glass dolls’ eyes or a red View-Master. I put the material in labeled boxes and store them to be rediscovered.

“When I select objects for a new composition, I may sit with them for days, moving them around like pieces on a chessboard until they take shape. Placement and balance are key. I remove pieces; add others, balancing shadows, shapes, textures and color until I know instinctively that the work is completed: the new composition has taken on another dimension, a unity of its own and gained strength and character.”

*RJ Rosegarten with one of the Americana series on view in ‘Lost & Found: the Art of Assemblage’ at the Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck © 2017 Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Rosegarten, who grew up in Great Neck (he graduated high school with movie director Francis Ford Coppola), now lives “in the country” in upstate New York, in a house he built 17 years ago where he has a 30 x 30 ft studio off his bedroom that opens to a deck and pond, and a 2500- sq ft basement work area.

His collected objects are neatly organized in labeled tubs under tables – machine parts, metal parts, extra toys, manikin hands.“Everything has a place, a place for everything.”

Often, he visualizes the entire piece in his head before he starts his assemblage.

“I just finished a piece Thursday. It doesn’t have a name (or does it have a name): The Quick Brown Dog Jumps Over the Lazy Fox. Why? Because part of the visual – a box,with 2 white hands, at the top has the keyboard of a very very small typewriter –a vertical piece, a piece at bottom, a nodule on top hands,. The sense of design is perfect. It was in my head.”

“I never went to art school, except for a month at the Art Students League, Bruce Dorfman, teaching there since early 60s – he said, push the envelope. It’s ok if off-center, if you don’t have anything there and want it to sit there.”

Indeed, it is so ironic considering that most people move to Great Neck from New York City because of the public schools, that his big regret is that when his family was still living in the Bronx, he was accepted into Music & Art, but before he could attend, his family moved to Great Neck.

“I should have gone to Music & Art. I would have had an art background and the chances are I would have gone to Pratt, School of Visual Arts, or Cooper Union.” He said his father was not keen on Rosegarten going into advertising, but had he had an art background, he would have been on the creative side, instead of a “suit.” “I would have been more Don Draper than the account guy.”

He was doing painting until 1990s, then, around 2000, he went to an antique show on 6^th Avenue and came upon wooden patterns which were used to make metal parts in the early 1900s. “I bought 20 of them –they were inexpensive – I didn’t know what I would do with them. I washed them off, That’s when I started.“

It fit into his overarching philosophy of reuse, repurpose, renewal – “an ability to use things that have been tossed away and have them come back and serve another purpose – Lost and Found (is what I call it). I’m not interested in what is sold in dollar store but things that have age, patina, character. Snapshot” is built around an antique folded camera and tractor parts.

“I take individual pieces that by themselves are utilitarian and they become a “body” – a personality. Each has its own personality.”

*Two in RJ Rosegarten’s “Americana” series © 2017 Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The exhibit also includes Rosegarten’s paintings, which have the look and vibe of Pop. “Just as I have reinvented myself a number of times in the past 30 years, so too has my art undergone a metamorphosis. Over the last ten years, it has moved from post-Pop paintings to a more muscular sculptural medium, where form and design take precedence over color.”

Regina Gil, Founder/Executive Director of the Arts Center, writes in her introduction to the catalog:

“In this latest chapter of his creative life, RJ Rosegarten draws upon the rich fabric of his imagination, strong art and design skills, and solid knowledge of carpentry that lets him execute what he already sees in his mind fully formed. And the results are impressive.

“Here is a man who grew up in a small town, absorbing all the qualities of civics, ethics, and community values that one associates with such an upbringing. He married young, had three sons and led the life of the American Dream. He even went on to work in the advertising world; that fabled Madison Avenue bastion of the creative idea sellers; but not as an artist, as a ‘suit’. So, without knowing it, he was adding to his arsenal of skills by including leadership, salesmanship, and public speaking to his repertoire. But he was fascinated by and engaged with the artists and designers.

“When he left advertising, he became a beloved and respected mayor of that same town, bringing his love of the town and business acumen to the job. He demonstrated that the world of politics and government were new fields on which he could impose his creative eye. As a result, the town grew and he was elected and re-elected time and again.

*RJ Rosegarten’s paintings and assemblages are on view at the Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck, Long Island through March 12 © 2017 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

“It was only when he left the town again, retiring from public life that he began to fully realize his longtime dream of being an artist in his own right. And he is an artist in the fullest sense of the word. Not only are his technical skills the very best; but his thoughts, ideas and vision are on display, inviting the viewer to enter his carefully constructed world; challenging the viewer to understand his point of view, to embrace it or to disagree. A lifetime of thinking and living, of humor and wit, of deep, serious emotion and also of playfulness; the full range of the human experience in a construction of wood and found objects.

“As a longtime friend, I am delighted to see RJ ‘Bob’ Rosegarten come home to Great Neck. Without his friendship and assistance, mentoring another dreamer through the shoals of politics, fundraising, and community engagement, it is doubtful that this Gold Coast Arts Center could have found its home here. It seems fitting that we honor him with this exhibit that introduces the people he served as mayor to the man he is now — the artist.”

“RJ Rosegarten, Lost & Found: The Art of Assemblage” is on view through March 12 at The Gold Coast Arts Center, 113 Middle Neck Rd, Great Neck, NY, 516-829-2570 or www.GoldCoastArts.org.

____________________

© 2017 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com 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

Nassau County Museum of Art Exhibitions Celebrate Century of Iconic Photography

November 22, 2016 krubin723

One of the most famous photos of all time, Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother, Nipomo California” (1936) is on view in “Light Works: 100 Years of Photos” at NCMA © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

For the first time, all of Nassau County Museum of Art’s galleries are devoted to the art of photography, collectively giving a retrospective and perspective on 100 years and some of the most important photographs and photographers in history. The exhibit is on view through March 5, 2017.

On view in the Main Galleries on the first floor are two exhibitions drawn from the collection of the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts (KIA), Kalamazoo, Michigan: Ansel Adams: Sight and Feeling and Light Works: 100 Years of Photos. On view in the Second Floor Galleries is New Photos: Long Island Collects, important photographic works of the last half century from private Long Island art collections.

Ansel Adams: Sight and Feeling: Ansel Adams’ ability to create photographs with a remarkable range and subtlety of tones is legendary. Yet for all his technical mastery, Adams recognized that what made a compelling photograph was far more elusive. This exhibition of Adams’ photographs from the KIA collection suggests how his intuitive and emotional response to the landscape resulted in powerful and enduring photographs.

*Ansel Adams, Vernal Fall, Yosemite Valley, California, 1920, gelatin silver print. Collection of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts; Gift of Wm. John Upjohn. ©The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.*

Light Works: 100 Years of Photos: From Eadweard Muybridge’s 19th-century photographic studies of animal locomotion to Richard Misrach’s contemporary chromogenic prints, this exhibition spans the history of photography. Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Curtis, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson and many other celebrated photographers comprise this survey of photography processes and subjects from 1873 to 2000.

*Eadweard Muybridge’s breakthrough photo, “The Horse in Motion,” from 1878 is on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Coincidentally, the opening at NCMA occurred the same day as Time published its “100 Most Influential Photos of All Time,” and notably, several in this exhibit have been included among those deemed the most influential including Eadweard Muybridge’s breakthrough photo, “The Horse in Motion,” from 1878; Edward Steichen’s “The Steerage” (1904), Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare” (1932), Dorothea Lange’s “The Migrant Mother” (1936) among them.

New Photos: Long Island Collects focuses on significant photographic works created from the 1960s through the present day, from private collectors. Among the artists included in New Photos: Long Island Collects are John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Vic Muniz, Cindy Sherman and William Wegman.

*Dr. Harvey Manes poses with Andre Kertesz’s “Chez Mondrian,” a print which he also has in his collection © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The Museum is offering a variety of public programs to amplify the experience of visiting these three exhibitions. Two films are screening daily: Stryker’s America: Photographing the Great Depression and Cartier-Bresson’s Century. Three Brown Bag Lectures illuminate the art and the artists included in these exhibitions. Other public programs are inspired by the exhibitions: Sketching in the Galleries, and The River, a concert performed by the musical ensemble ETHEL. The Museum’s family programs from November 19 to March 5 similarly draw inspiration from the exhibitions: Neiman Marcus Family Sundays, February Break for Art and two Super Family Sunday offerings, Winter Wonderland and Merrynaking in a Gold Coast Mansion. For further information on these programs, visit the Museum’s website, nassaumuseum.org/events.

Even the museum’s gift shop artfully presents items that evoke the exhibit.

A Destination

The Nassau County Museum of Art is a destination in itself.

Most of the 145 acres that are now the Nassau County Museum of Art originally belonged to poet, lawyer, conservationist, political activist, patron of the arts and preservationist William Cullen Bryant, who settled in Roslyn in 1843.

The long-time editor of the New York Post built his home, Cedarmore, and founded Roslyn’s public library.

In 1862, he built a cottage for his friend and fellow poet, Miss Jerusha Dewey (you can see the cottage when you explore the hiking trails).

In 1900, Lloyd Stephens Bryce purchased Bryant’s ‘Upland Farm’ and commissioned architect Ogden Codman, Jr. to design Bryce House, the present mansion. Henry Clay Frick, co-founder of U.S. Steel Corporation purchased Bryce House in 1919 as a gift for his son, Childs Frick, a Princeton graduate who became a vertebrate paleontologist and naturalist.

Be sure to make time to explore the grounds of this magnificent estate:

Sculpture Park: Approximately 40 works, many of them monumental in size, by renowned artists including Fernando Botero, Tom Otterness, George Rickey and Mark DiSuvero among others, are situated to interact with nature on the museum’s magnificent 145-acre property.

Walking Trails: The museum’s 145 acres include many marked nature trails through the woods, perfect for family hikes or independent exploration.

Gardens: From restored formal gardens of historic importance to quiet little nooks for dreaming away an afternoon, the museum’s 145 acre property features many lush examples of horticultural arts. Explore expanded gardens and beautiful new path to the museum.

Nassau County Museum of Art is located at One Museum Drive in Roslyn Harbor, just off Northern Boulevard, Route 25A, two traffic lights west of Glen Cove Road. The museum is open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults, $8 for seniors (62 and above) and $4 for students and children (4 to12). Members are admitted free. Docent-led tours of the exhibition are offered at 2 p.m. each day; tours of the mansion are offered each Saturday at 1 p.m.; meet in the lobby, no reservations needed. Tours are free with museum admission. Family art activities and family tours are offered Sundays from 1 pm; free with museum admission. Call (516) 484-9338, ext. 12 to inquire about group tours. The Museum Store is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Red Maple Market Café is open Saturday and Sunday, noon to 3 p.m. Call (516) 484-9337 for current exhibitions, events, days/times and directions or log onto nassaumuseum.org.

____________________

© 2016 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com 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

The Boundaries of ‘Interiors’ Explored in Art Exhibit at Gold Coast Arts Center

September 26, 2016 krubin723

*Gold Coast Arts Center gallery curator Jude Amsel with ‘Interiors’ artists Orestes Gonzalez, Laini Nemett and Maxi Cohen © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

What is inside, and what is outside? What are the boundaries that delineate “interiors”. How much of what is interior is our own perception, our own making? These are the questions explored by three artists – Laini Nemett, Orestes Gonzalez, and Maxi Cohen – represented in “Interiors” on view at the Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck, through November 20.

Interiors is an exhibition that explores the artist’s relationship with familiar places and how they connect to interior landscapes of personal history, memory and association. The painter Laini Nemett comments that she wants the composite imagery to conjure memory but also to emulate an experience of place. Orestes Gonzalez’s photographs of interior spaces captures moments of loneliness, happiness and a time of innocence. Photographer/videographer, Maxi Cohen captures moments in the ladies room, “as a space of sanctuary and solitude”.

The only thing common to all is that their creative works “serve as a portal to interior spaces that are in plain sight and yet frequently overlooked,” notes Jude Amsel, Gold Coast Arts Center Gallery Director. They offer a portal to a new way of looking and experiencing what we all take for granted.

Laini Nemett: “Last Door on the Right”

Laini Nemett creates her own sense of place and space – literally. Her paintings stem from imagination – memories and relationships – which go into intricate cardboard models models she constructs at the beginning of her process. She then creates bold paintings that realistically represent these imagined places. They take the viewer in, forcing the viewer to contemplate the scene. It is at that point that the viewer realizes the impossibility of the place – a window that is upside down, a ceiling that has the texture and color of carpeting which should be on the floor.

Gold Coast Arts Center Director Regina Gil and Alexandra Gil who curates the Shorts Films in the Gold Coast International Film Festival, with artist Laini Nemett and her painted perspective of the Eiffel Tower © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

One of the most interesting perspectives stems from a whirlwind visit to Paris and the Eiffel Tower. You would never realize it is the Eiffel Tower because the perspective is looking down from a landing through plexiglass casting a reflection made “wobbly” with rain.

*Laini Nemett with one of her paintings on view in ‘Interiors” at the Gold Coast Arts Center. © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

“I assemble my own relics of experience. I discover their logic in the ways they fit together and attempt to make sense of how we decipher place,” Nemett says. One of her paintings in the exhibit is titled “Last Door on the Right.”

“A constant kaleidoscope of imagery the mind sorts at random, concealing and revealing fragments of memories. I choose to disorient myself amidst the puzzle, letting observation suggest the direction.”

*One of the models that artist Laini Nemett meticulously constructs out of her imagination which will be realized in painting © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

“Extended time in different architectural cultures has shaped how I understand the idea of ‘home.’ In downtown Baltimore, buildings are boarded up and left as skeletons of a family’s history, while new constructions incite possibilities of new beginnings. In the boroughs of New York, old facades are painted away or torn down as new anonymous condo projects begin almost every day. The expansive land of Wyoming holds 100-year old ranches and hand-built homesteads that remain as physical mementos of multiple generations.”

But while the constructions hold the histories and the memories of the people, the paintings are devoid of people altogether. Like a dream, you are surveying the scene.

There is such detail that at first glance, you think you could walk in. But these structures don’t exist – and can’t exist.

“It’s more compelling. I don’t want the painting to answer the questions, but get you to think more, ask more, linger longer. That’s why I paint instead of take photographs. I want to do something that can only happen in painting.”

Orestes Gonzalez: Photographs of Havana, Miami

Orestes Gonzalez also challenges people’s perspective. His black-and-white photographic series from Havana, Cuba, “This Island is My House,” (2016) shows interiors which are really exteriors – a barber who has turned a courtyard into his shop, a building without a roof. Exteriors become interiors and vice versa.

In Cuba, he notes, roof collapses are common, and the lack of materials nad maintenance has created a landscape of ruins in a city of 2 million people.

By necessity, then, “public and private lines are blurred or compromised,” he says. In Cuba, where interior space is very limited or compromised, “interiors are more symbolic rather than literal.” These are people who live their inner lives in a public setting and deal with their environment – their situation – the best they can. In Cuba, the island is the ‘house’ they live in.”

GPhotographer Orestes Gonzalez poses with his series, ‘Julio’s House’ © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com — *Photographer Orestes Gonzalez poses with his series, ‘Julio’s House’ © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

There are also four mural-sized color photographs taken of his Uncle Julio’s apartment in Miami, taken after he passed away. “Julio’s House,” 2007, shows how his interior space was revealing of who he was inside, but afraid to reveal to the outside world.

Maxi Cohen: ‘Ladies Rooms Around the World’

Maxi Cohen, a filmmaker, turned to a different camera in making “Ladies Rooms Around the World.” The series, produced over decades, makes you rethink these customarily private spaces. Her own journey began in 1978 when she was at the Miami Film Festival with her first feature length film documentary, “Joe and Maxi” about her relationship with her father. She retreated to the Ladies room to escape the boring awards dinner and found herself among a gaggle of octogenarians fussing over corsets and false eyelashes. She was entranced by this “tribal dance” and whenever she saw an interesting scene in the ladies room – Australia to Zambia, Bombay to Bosnia, Rio to Tel Aviv, she snapped it. Almost all of them also capture her in the scene – she said she didn’t feel it was right to invade the privacy of others and not include herself. “Since I am recording others in their private rituals, the sanctuaries of women, I have not wanted to separate myself; there is no ‘them’, only ‘we’.” She says.

Maxi Cohen with part of her photographic series, ‘Ladies Rooms Around the World’ © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

She notes that in the 1990s, she was in an Aboriginal bar in the Australian outback, when women took her into the ladies room to confide in her about the incest and rape of the young boys and girls in the community. In Zambia, she watched as a ladies room attendant would be accepting cash all night, and exchanging little packets in blue tissue paper.

The contrast in places, scenes and colors of Maxi Cohen’s photographic decades-long series, “Ladies rooms Around the World,” is artful in a way you would never expect © 2016 Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The contrast in places, scenes and colors (since she shoots with available light), not to mention the range of women captured in the images – the New York Thruway, 1978; Livingstone Disco, Zambia, 2003; a film festival in 1981 where Maxi Cohen captures herself in a borrowed gown or possibly robe her friend got from Yoko Ono – is artful and aesthetically pleasing in a way you would never expect hearing about a series of photos of “Ladies Rooms Around the World.”

The Gold Coast Arts Center is located at 113 Middle Neck Road (entrance from the Maple Avenue parking lot), 516-829-2570, goldcoastarts.org.

____________________

Going Places, Far & Near

Tag Archives: Long Island arts

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

Like this:

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

Like this:

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

Like this:

Gold Coast International Film Festival Announces 2018 Winners

Like this:

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

Like this:

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

Like this:

Nassau County Museum of Art Becomes Destination for Arts Education with Opening of Manes Center

Like this:

Former Mayor, Now Artist RJ Rosegarten Returns to Great Neck With ‘Lost & Found: the Art of Assemblage’ Exhibit

Like this:

Nassau County Museum of Art Exhibitions Celebrate Century of Iconic Photography

Like this:

The Boundaries of ‘Interiors’ Explored in Art Exhibit at Gold Coast Arts Center

Like this:

Because travel is a life-enhancing, relationship building, world-changing experience

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Because travel is a life-enhancing, relationship building, world-changing experience