Art Barge Gears Up For A Summer Of Art

With summer on the horizon, Victor D’Amico Institute of Art (aka The Art Barge) is gearing up for an artistic season filled with creative workshops. This year, many of the classes and events of the past continue while new areas will be explored with a range of instructors and partner organizations, mediums and techniques.

The full program of art classes, primarily held at The Art Barge in Napeague, begins June 3 and runs through September 13. Weekly classes in studio painting take place through the summer with workshops scattered through June, July, and August in watercolor, pastel, collage, encaustic, and printmaking. Two classes will be offered in photography, “The Photography of Place” which focuses on the artist’s studio and includes visits to the D’Amico Studio and Archive, Pollock-Krasner House, Moran Studio, and LongHouse Reserve on Tuesdays in July, and “Environmental Photography” which returns on Thursdays in August with visits to nature preserves stewarded by The Nature Conservancy. Daily afternoon sessions in drawing and life drawing will be held on Tuesday and Thursdays, respectively. This year, “Painting on Location” is back for one week each month from June to August with the opportunity to paint at a private Sagaponack property and at the Madoo Conservancy. For those interested in working beyond two dimensions, there will be four weeks of ceramics in June and 3D workshops exploring mosaics, stained glass, fused glass, weaving, casting, and mixed media in July and August.

Other classes include “The Bauhaus Preliminary Course,” presented in collaboration with The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, taking place June 17 to 21. Fritz Horstman, an artist/educator from the Albers Foundation, will lead students in an exploration of space, light, shadows, thread, and color to gain hands-on knowledge and skill through exercises related to Josef Albers’s color course, Anni Albers’s weaving, and Moholy-Nagy’s material studies.

Returning this year to teach a unique workshop from July 1 to 5 is museum educator and D’Amico scholar, Sara Torres. She will lead a class in “Un-Learning,” in which students will experiment with strategies devised by modern artists to un-learn preconceived ideas of sculpture, painting, drawing, and more.

In July and August, children’s art classes will be offered and once each month from June to August, “Artists Speak” will bring in guests to discuss the theme of collaborations. The Wednesday evenings begin at 6 p.m. at The Art Barge and the first guests will be Kris Moran and A.S. Hamrah on June 19, followed by Emilia and Ilya Kabakov on July 17, and ending with Maira and Alex Kalman on August 14. Accompanying exhibitions by the Kabakovs and the Kalmans will be on view in The Barge Gallery.

For more information on the full season of offerings, contact theartbarge.org.