Free Summer Workshops at Pierson Inspire Next Generation

[caption id="attachment_42461" align="aligncenter" width="960"] A photo of the drone in action during last week's art workshop. Photos courtesy of Peter Solow.[/caption]

By Mara Certic

Sag Harbor has for a long time attracted artists and others with a discerning eye. And thanks in large part to the work of local art teachers and one generous benefactor, the next generation of local artists is getting the chance to grow, learn and try new things.

The halls of Pierson High School were quiet and dark last week, as one would expect in early August, until you got up the stairs to art teacher Peter Solow’s room, where a handful of high school students were talking, laughing and working on various projects.

“One of the biggest issues is scheduling and logistics,” Mr. Solow said on Monday morning. “It’s always been a problem, the school doesn’t set itself up for kids to work on something for extended periods of time.”

So at the end of last month, thanks to funding from the Donald Reutershan Educational Trust and visiting artists donating their time, weeklong Pierson summer art workshops began taking place at the school.

Each of the programs is three hours a day, Monday through Friday, which Mr. Solow said is good for kids to really get involved in their art, adding that during the school year, they’re confined to 42-minute blocks of time.

Liz Marchisella, a visual arts, photography and art teacher at Pierson, has been teaching a middle school workshop this week. The amount of time the kids have to dedicate to one piece of art is very different from what they’re used to, she said, but “they’re doing really well.” Elementary and middle school art projects can occasionally have a conveyer belt feeling, she said, with students churning out pieces each and every class. The opportunity for them to work on just one piece for 15 hours gives them a taste of how a real professional artist might work, she said.

[caption id="attachment_42465" align="alignright" width="300"] Liz Marchisella during her middle school multimedia workshop this week.[/caption]

“The real key to is that I tell them to be open minded, manipulate and change. It’s not always just start and finish—there’s a middle ground,” she said.

During the first week of August, Laura Bellmont and Emily Brink, who Mr. Solow described as “the coolest people in the world,” spent the week at Pierson teaching students how to make short stop-motion animations.

Last week, students and teachers spent time working with one of Pierson’s newest toys, a state-of-the-art drone. Performance artist Andrea Cote from the Watermill Center and artist Scott Sandell presented the workshop, which combined performance art, drawing, photographing, video editing and, of course, drones.

“One of the big issues is, how do you take the technology and make art out of it,” Mr. Solow said.

“Both Scott and I, being of a certain age, were thinking of Ingmar Bergman or Fellini,” Mr. Solow said of the workshop, which had the students wearing venetian masks and semitranslucent tunics emblazoned with digital photographs of their faces doing performance art pieces inspired by ballet, puppets and European directors on Sagg Main Beach.

Students have access to all of the raw footage, and are able to edit it as they wish.

This week, Mr. Sandell, whose children went to Pierson and were taught and inspired by Mr. Solow, is leading another workshop in which students are learning to build kites by hand.

One of the big concerns and conversations art teachers have these days, Mr. Solow said, is that in this golden age of technology, students are no longer using their hands to build things.

[caption id="attachment_42463" align="alignleft" width="323"] Isabella DiRussa and the prints and model for her kite.[/caption]

“Scott’s whole thing has been to think about this in a way of 3-D design sculpture, and they immediately started to see it,” Mr. Solow said.

“I do those all the time,” Mr. Sandell said of his kites, which he sells as simple artistic approaches to decorating an atrium space. He recently made 64 kites for the biggest Internal Revenue Service office in the country.

“The idea is not to get them to do Sandells,” Mr. Solow said, “But do their own work with Scott’s as inspiration.”

“These are really great kids, it’s summer and you could lying in your room looking at the ceiling. Or you can come here and have this opportunity to be creative and make art,” Mr. Sandell said.