Come check out the Brooklyn Utopias teen art show opening night this coming Thursday
evening, Nov. 12, 6-8pm @ Starting Artists, 211 Smith St!!
"Brooklyn
Utopias?" is a series of art exhibits and public programs inviting artists
and youth to respond to differing visions of an ideal Brooklyn.
This includes two
group shows of over 30 professional artists at the Old Stone House (Sept 15-Oct
31) and the Brooklyn Historical Society (Oct 2-Jan 3). To
engage Brooklyn teens in responding to the exhibit theme, we're holding a teen
"Brooklyn Utopias?" show at Starting Artists' gallery, open to all
Brooklyn middle-high school students.
In addition to giving a series of
workshops at SA led by "Brooklyn Utopias?" artists and curator, we
reached out to middle and high schools all over the borough, to open the show
to as many local youth as possible and hopefully get them involved in SA in the
process too. At the Urban Assembly School of Music and Art, an arts-based high
school in Downtown Brooklyn, one
photography teacher led her whole class in photographing “Brooklyn Utopias”
and brought students to SA to edit their work.
The
workshops and artist talks at SA inspired students to get more involved. First, "Brooklyn Utopias?"
artist Triada Samaras and her colleague Susan Konvit gave a presentation on how
art can be a vehicle in political activism, and invited students to decorate
respiratory masks protesting pollution on the Gowanus Canal.
Second, artist Jess Levey
had students project images of what they’d like to see in their neighborhoods
onto their own bodies, leading to a series of photos of wildlife, trees, and vegetation
overlapping human silhouettes.
Third, artist Adam Taye brought in typewriters and a stack of old New Yorker
magazines and taught students how to erase and re-type cartoon captions
relating their own thoughts to appropriated imagery.
These artist-initiated projects
inspired other SA students to tackle such topics as “green building” and
recycling, the influence of big box stores on local communities, and the
branding and commodification of Brooklyn artists. From printing out buttons
with artsy Brooklyn slogans to sending simulated messages in bottles down the
Gowanus’s murky waters, the students working on the “Brooklyn Utopias?” teen
art show have engaged with some of the most critical issues facing their
communities today.

Katherine Gressel, Curator