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P a g e 6 PHOENIX February 7,1974I I A A Brooklyn museum Art SchoolOpens Studios to VisitorsBY OORRIXE COLEMANPotters wheels were turning and clay was being squished at the Brooklyn Museum Art School last week, as hundreds of visitors at the Sunday afternoon open house moved from studio to studio, and stopped now and then to watch the artist demonstrators, to touch the soft materials, and to wallow in the ambience enhanced by kilns and easels, by smells of paint and fixitive, by sculpture and painting exhibited all about the various rooms and halls.By the afternoon%u2019s end, many of the visitors could be seen at the long hallway tables filling in the applications for registration in one or more of the school%u2019s spring term%u2019s classes. Though some of the registrants had never enrolled in an art school before, they were eagerly selecting classes in watercolor and drawdng, in jewelry making and ceramics, in weaving and woodworking.%u201cWe have something to offer the beginner%u2014and the advanced student too,%u201d says George McClancy, the newly appointed art school director, who is a working artist and a philosophy and art history scholar too.A painter, with a studio on M anhattan%u2019s Broome St., McClancy, who taught at CUNY and at a variety of other colleges,0\\Wc , n o'; n.1%is most enthused by the openness of the Brooklyn Museum school. %u201cThere%u2019s a chance for people to start here%u2014without entrance r e q u i r e m e n t s - -w ith o u t a bureaucracy%u2014in a flexible situation unconcerned about degrees.%u201dThe Director, whose Master%u2019s Thesis focused on the Bauhaus School, has great ambitions for the Museum school, envisioning it as a %u201cfantastic center for the study of art, attracting great minds and great artists in a continuing dialogue.%u201dThe school, McClancy emphasizes, is attracting a young, extremely promising faculty%u2014as well as accomplished artists, and is already generating excitement as a result of this merger.Excitement at the Brooklyn Museum seems to be coming from innovative programming as well as from a vital faculty, and the director and staff point proudly to a sculpture program that begins this season. Using three teachers wdio bring three different approaches, the course which meets five days per week %u201cwill run the whole gamut of what sculpture is about.%u201d Said to be tried for the first time anywhere, the student who will work with the figure, in carving and in construction, will, by being subject to three different points of view %u201cface the fact of conflict as it exists in the art world\own solutions.The young sculpture team, Barney Hodes, Ken Greenleaf and Nancy Azara, come from backgrounds as different as their approaches to the art. Barney who studied at the Museum 10 years ago, was born and still lives in Flatbush and has a Masters degree in Fine Arts. He feels however that his studies at the Museum were the most meaningful and is intent on %u201cpaying Back%u201d some portion of what he got from the school.Grand Opening!Casa RomanoPizza & Hoi HerogFree Delivery94 Union St.875-0426 Mon.-Thurs. 11-7r \\Visit the PromenadeRestaurantfor steaks, chops, seafood, soda fountain.Home-style Cooking is our specialty.W i t h n i i r %u00a3>*pnn+ f j v f f a c ilitie s ^we have added a service barserving cocktails9wines, and liquors.84 Montague St., ( Corner df Hicks )'*;l O %u201e nr> C O O %u201c7 4 0 0...........- -------- * %u00abKen, a dweller South of Soho in Manhattan, recently exhibited in a major Manhattan gallery. With but a High School diploma, Ken, whose focus is on %u201cbuilding it,%u201d started in sculpture by working as a sculptor%u2019s apprentice.Nancy, bored after two years of college, became a costume designer for the theater, enrolled in the Art Students League and taught in her own studio. Specializing in woodcarving and color, Nancy has taught in various colleges, and fs now doubling at Brooklyn College%u2019s Downtown School of Contemporary Studies.Joan Thorne, another innovative teacher within the Art School faculty, is beginning the second sem ester of her combination painting, drawing and consciousness raising course. Explaining that consciousness raising (for both men and women) is the optional first hour in her three hour class, she notes that the majority of students hung on last term, excited by the sessions on women%u2019s issues, power feelings, aggression and such. Believing that %u201cart come from life%u2014not justOPEN LINCOLN%u2019S BIRTHDAY & WASHINGTON%u2019S BIRTHDAY (Tues. Feb. 12 and Mon. Feb. 18)enjoy steaksbroiled toour orderespeciallydelicious att i A G E A N D DbllNERfrom art,%u201d she tries to get the students to learn from each other and to %u201cget in touch with their feelings,%u201d and express them on the canvas.The idea for the combined class emerged, says Joan Thorne, during a term of teaching at another art school when an all woman class acknowledged its ignorance of even the most famous American female painters. With a background of three and a half years in her own consciousness raising group, the artist (who has exhibited in such places as Washington%u2019s Corcoran Gallery, and the Whitney Museum) decided to begin C.R. in that school. The Brooklyn Museum course came as a result of the positive reactions from the earlier students, she says.Though the Museum%u2019s %u201cWeekend High School Scholarship Program%u201d has been existance for some time, it has been a serious force for the last four years under the aegis of Ron Mehlman. Geared toward high school students with talent or with %u201cbroad interests in the a rts ,%u201d the program %u2014on Saturdays and Sundays%u2014provides the teen agers with professional art school experience, a professional artist faculty, and %u201cenriches their college bound portfolios.%u201dProviding classes that they don%u2019t get in the city high schools like figure drawing and printmaking, in long three hour sessions, the Museum absorbs half the tuition,with the student only paying $38. per three hour course (continuing for 12 sessions)The students most of whom come from nearby Brooklyn areas, can take up to three classes each weekend, says Mehlman, a sculptor who was once the chairman of a city high school art department. %u201cWithin the art school atmosphere, passing paintings on their way to the coffee shop, with a sufficient time span to get involved in their work, the students get, a chance to hone their edges, to become more skillfull, to take advantage of the city,%u201d Mehlman asserts.Sunday classes in the high school program begin on Feb. 17, and Saturday classes sta rt the following week, Feb. 23.Celebrate e.e.cummings on Sun.The public has been invited to a festive celebration of the poetry of e. e. cummings to be given at The First Unitarian Church, corner of Pierrepont St. & Monroe PL, Feb. 10 at 3:30 p.m.This celebration arranges the poems of cummings, accepted as one of this country%u2019s outstanding poets, with music and dance. The Festival affirms a simple human caring and a humanistic approach to democratic institutions, say the organizers.Winner of21 annualHOLIDAYMagazineAwardsliMtlfi's laadMik htiuiM tin r u t!cm i t . SSOOHUN m o c x t r a o M t o i o i u u TKwnjI . 3-5111 O ftN 11.30 AM 1 0 SAT. til 9,38 %u25a0 O s%u00ab e SDsdsy!aim oiilasBrMid-Eastern and International CuisineOPEN 11:30a.m. to Midnight,7 Days a WeekServing Lunch and Dinner 212-624-9267218 COURT STREET, BROOKLYN, N.Y.\M V V i a i i i G i i s i r i i n w r i iFriday 2 Saturday nfqhte ^ 10pm to 2 amNow appearing: Ralph RotkoD, tblK-rocK piano-vocaii&tSupper served'till lam ibUNCW 2 - I I DIMM H -f-K V l t> 5 3 0 -1 0 00 ,SUPf>fft lO - l l .I3fe ATLANTIC AVENUE. (.B tT G I NITON & H t W , ) '- A ll V'OR PINNER RESERVATIONS 6 M ~ f3 5 l