Knowing You, Knowing Me : New Work by Artist Mentors, Opening In Our Gallery Friday, November 21st from 5pm-7pm

Meet our 20 artist mentors! They were selected through a competitive, student-led application process. These artists volunteer over 4,000 hours to mentor Providence high school students in the visual and literary arts.

Later this month, they will introduce their creative practice through an exhibition of thier artwork. This exhibtion opens Friday, November 21st, from 5-7pm at 743 Westminster Street. Make sure you save the date to join us in celebrating these wonderful artists dedicated to our students this year. The gallery opening event is free and open to the public.

Here is a sample of biographies of our new 2008-09 artist mentors:

Ben Fino-Radin was born and raised in rural Ontario, NY, surrounded by things he had taken apart, action figures, comic books, computers, and a nurturing family. Graduating from Alfred University in 2007, with his BFA, he has since relocated to Providence, RI. Ben's work finds its footing in traditional folk culture, popular culture, psychedelic cultural abstraction, fictional mysticism, and digital approximation. Since graduating in 2007 he has shown at Stairwell Gallery and AS220 in Providence, Current Gallery and Metro Gallery in Baltimore, Mountain Fold Gallery and Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts in New York, with a forthcoming show at The New Museum in NY. As was the case in his childhood, Ben spends most of his time in his room making things. He also splits his time between working on music projects, working at Black Cat Graphics, and of course mentoring at New Urban arts. Ben is beginning his second year as a mentor, working with students on radio/podcast/music/audio production. He also has a website: http://benjaminter.net

Dionte Noble is a graphic designer attending his third year at Johnson & Wales University. He plans to graduate in 2010 with his bachelor’s degree in Computer Graphics and New Media. Originally from Long Island New York, he felt as though Providence would be a great place to get away and experience the college life. Dionte loves what he does, as far as designing. That led the passionate and eager student to explore the limitations of his skills, by becoming an entrepreneur and starting his own t-shirt line at the age of 19. As he mentors at New Urban Arts, he hopes to grow not only as an artist, but as a person.

Meredith Younger was born and raised in the wild wastelands of West Texas. She relocated to Providence in 1998 to earn a BFA in Ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Design. Along the way, she became a co-founder of the Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies (PIPS), editor of Crosswalk, and co-organizer of ProvFlux, as well as a teacher, sculptor, graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, writer, urban explorer, librarian, and mother. She helped to establish a ceramics program at the Steel Yard, and has worked with many other local organizations, including the Providence After School Alliance (PASA), the MET School, the Jacqueline M. Welsh School for the Arts, and AS220’s Community Printshop at the Dreyfus. This is her first year as an artist mentor at New Urban Arts, where she will be working with students to publish their poetry, comics, and zines. This past summer, Meredith co-organized the first ever Zine Team at New Urban Arts, and during the Spring she worked with NUA students to design and publish the 4th annual zine, FLIP.

To read more about the artist mentors at New Urban Arts this year, click here.

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Student Starts Zine Team at Local High School Modeled After New Urban Arts Summer Program

Emely Barroso, a student of New Urban Arts, participated in New Urban Arts Zine Team this summer working with artist mentors Melissa Mendes and Meredith Younger. This year, she started a Zine Team at her school, Feinstein High School, which meets every Tuesday afternoon. The 8 members are making personal publications to trade at their first Zine Swap, the 18th of November.

“I just really love how everyone came together to make their own self-published magazines this summer at New Urban Arts. I was inspired by that. I wanted other people to feel like that too, proud of something they made. I talked to the afterschool coordinators and asked my teacher, Miss Heather, to supervise our group.

On the first day we made mini-interview zines, which was the first thing we did in the New Urban Arts Zine Team this past summer. I was really nervous at first that no one would come, or too many people would come, but it’s going very well! Everyone is working really hard! We have three weeks left to work on our zines before our Zine Swap in November. We are going to collect two separate stacks of our zines that we publish, one for the Zine Library at New Urban Arts and one for the Papercut Zine Library in Cambridge, MA, which the New Urban Arts Zine Team visited this past summer.

I just want to say thank you to everyone at New Urban Arts and the Zine Team this summer because without them, none of this would be possible and I would have never felt this magical feeling when I fold paper and cut it.”

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Thank You Hasbro Children's Fund!

The Hasbro Children's Fund awarded New Urban Arts a $5000 grant to support Career Awareness in the Arts. We'll work with RISD | Public Engagement to use this grant to help our students apply to art school and learn about the diverse career opportunities in the arts from college students and working professionals.

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Join Us in Welcoming Six New Board Members

We're pleased to welcome new members to our Board of Directors. New Urban Arts is fortunate to have such a talented and passionate group anchoring our work. Meet them here.

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New Urban Arts Staff Presents at Breaking Down the Walls Conference

We were invited to share our approach to Arts Mentoring at a conference, Breaking Down the Walls: Reaching Youth, Families and Communities Through the Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey on October 23-24, 2008. Program Director Sarah Meyer and Executive Director Jason Yoon led a workshop for 25 youth and social service workers describing New Urban Arts' history and how artists and youth learn together here. Workshop participants also learned group drawing and poetry activities they could use in working with youth, including blind drawing, list poems, and how to use constraints to inspire creativity. Special thanks to Lois Saperstein of the Center for the Arts for this great opportunity.

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