New Urban Arts Loves Love: Heart Party 2009

Our Second Annual Heart Party was held on February 12th. Started last year, the Heart Party was conceived by former artist mentor, Melissa Mendes who responded to students and mentors lamenting the upcoming holiday of Valentine's Day. This year STAB (New Urban Arts Studio Team Advisory Board) continued the new studio tradition, with Ava, STAB member, at the helm. Fifteen people from students to staff to artist mentors participated, making mailboxes of stapled file folders and one of kind valentines. Allot of Hershey kisses, Chex mix and Smartfood popcorn were consumed and fun was had by all. For a look inside our Heart Party visit our blog, to view a Valentine's animation created by students and artist mentor Ben Fino-Radin.

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Students at New Urban Arts Create Annual Valentine's Day Mixtape for Artist Mentors, Fellows and Staff. Check Out the Playlist Below. Thank you, Students, for Being so Thoughtful!

And She Was, The Talking Heads: Erik Gould, artist mentor
Theme Song, Doug, The TV Show: Ben Fino-Radin, artist mentor
Shut Up and Let Me Go, The Tiny Tings: Isaac Wingfield, artist mentor
Hey Julie, Fountains of Wayne: Julia Gualtieri, artist mentor
Smile, Lily Allen: Adrienne Benz, artist mentor
Nrrd Grrl, MC Cris: Meredith Younger, artist mentor
Circus, Brittany Spears: David Colannino, artist mentor
If I Ain't Got You, Alicia Keys: Emily Ustach, artist mentor
Across the Universe, Fiona Apple: Jennifer Rice, artist mentor
She's a Rainbow, The Rolling Stones: Caitlin Cali, artist mentor
Head Over Heels, Tears for Fears: Morgan Fagant, artist mentor
Bicycle Race, Queen: Melissa Small, artist mentor
Rock Lobster, B52's: David Karoff, artist mentor
Girl, Beck: Erica Palmiter, artist mentor
Blue Monday, New Order: McKenzie Burrus-Granger, artist mentor
Paris, Tokyo, Lupe Fiasco: Dionte Noble, artist mentor
Smooth Operator, Sade: Abel Hernandez, artist mentor
Walking on Sunshine, Katrina & The Waves: Zach Clark, artist mentor
Black Hole, She and Him: Lane Taplin, artist mentor
I Love to Singa, Al Jolson: Jane Androski, artist mentor
Aguanille, Marc Anthony: Jason Yoon, executive director
Wicked Little Town, Hedwig & the Angry Inch: Kian Shenfield, study buddy
SuperModel, RuPaul: Jesse Banks III, studio manager
Ob La Di Ob La Da, The Beatles: Peter Hocking, arts mentoring fellow
Pocket Full of Sunshine, Natasha Bedingfield, Tamara Kaplan, operations manager
What We Need More of Is Science, MC Hawking: Dan Schleifer, study buddy
Superhuman, Chris Brown/Keri Hilson: Sarah Meyer, program director
Anime Polka, Weird Al: Andrew Oesch, arts mentoring fellow

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Conversation with Arley-Rose Torsone of Design Providence: Wed, March 18 6-8pm

This Spring, New Urban Arts will continue to host Conversations, a series of public conversations on sustainable creative practice. Whether they are gardeners, painters, chefs, writers or plumbers, unique individuals will discuss how they integrate creativity into their personal and professional lives. This program is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rhode Island Foundation, and is organized by the Arts Mentoring Fellows at New Urban Arts, Andrew Oesch and Peter Hocking. Conversations are located at 743 Westminster Street in Providence and are free and open to the public.

Mark your calendars for the first of the series, March 18, 2009 from 6-8pm with artist Arley-Rose Torsone, a local artist who wants to make the world a better place through graphic design. She is thoroughly invested in her work at AS220 as the in-house graphic designer and manager of the Design Providence Cottage Industry. She also teaches design classes for young people at Broad Street Studio. Since her graduation from Parsons the New School for Design and moving to Providence in 2004, she has dedicated her professional career to designing for causes which have socially-responsible roots and sustainable practices. She believes that "good design is not just about profit or beauty, but creating social value" (Patrick Butler). She also loves hanging out with hot air balloonists, typographers, special collections librarians and offset printers who are total curmudgeons.

Stay tuned for future Conversations. A full calendar will soon be posted on our website.

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Executive Director, Jason Yoon addresses Rhode Island Scholastic Awards Winners

The Rhode Island Art Educators Association invited Executive Director, Jason Yoon to address Rhode Island's Scholastic Award winners. He shared a personal story of how a mentor helped him find his own creative voice and freed him to think and learn independently. Read the speech on our blog, click here.

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Send a New Urban Arts Alumnus to Peru for a Spring Break Service Trip!

The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) is famous for its intense freshman foundation year program. With all that work, it's hard to imagine finding time to lead other initiatives. But in spite of this workload, Laura Huaranga, (New Urban Arts graduate 2008 and a RISD freshman) is working with a team of her RISD classmates to organize a service trip to Peru, where her family moved from before she started high school. Laura will be building houses and painting murals with the community in Pisco. The group will also be helping with earthquake relief. She needs to raise $800 by mid March and already has $300. They have organized bake sales, concerts and other events to meet their goal.

Please join us in helping her by mailing a check payable to:

ASB Peru 
c/o Laura Huaranga
2 College Street, Box 802
Providence, RI 02903

Or donate on paypal through http://risdperuvians.blogspot.com/ 

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Salsa Soulfood Fundraiser for Artsreach  
      
Last Saturday night, Jason Yoon and students taking his salsa mentoring workshop, Angel Peña, Celina Santana, Dennes Garcia, Kevin Gonsalves, Libertad Vargas, Abel Hernandez, Kedrin Frias, Maxine Kali Wright, and Maria Diaz taught a salsa lesson at The Salsa Soulfood Fundraiser at Mathewson Street United Methodist Church. The party supported ArtsReach, a program seeking to empower the homeless and people living with AIDS to build life skills through the arts. We were excited to help this great cause! For more info and to support ArtReach, click here.

Salsa at New Urban Arts meets Mondays at 6PM. Come visit us!

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Honors, Openings, Fellowships, Projects, and Blogs...New Urban Arts Artist Mentors and Students Are Doing Great Things!

>>Arts Mentoring Fellow, Andrew Oesch is participating in an exhibition titled Without You I am Nothing: Cultural Democracy from Providence and Chicago. The screen printed poster he created last year for the New Urban Arts Conversations Series is featured as part of an exhibition. Curated by Anne Elizabeth Moore, Without You I am Nothing displays a wide collection of new, recent, and downright old works on paper that require more from the viewer than merely reading about and attending the event described in the poster. These works contain stuff that falls off on purpose, windows, parts that move, space for new information, dials, buttons, removable elements, or other user-manipulated, four-dimensional aspects of awesomeness.

Without You I am Nothing: Cultural Democracy from Providence and Chicago will be held at The Green Lantern Gallery & Press in Chicago from March 27 - April 25. The Opening Reception is March 27, 9 - 11 pm.

In Chicago, Andrew Oesch and Meg Turner are facilitating a participatory work titled, And We Drew A City Together, which invites collaborative city building with collaged stickers of architectural components. Andrew and Meg first tested the project at New Urban Arts, February 20, 2009. The imaginary city created by nearly 50 participants can be seen on our gallery walls through the middle of March.

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