Pablo Diaz (Acting Director and Contemporary Art Issues Instructor) is currently an MFA candidate at Hunter College in New York City and recipient of the Kossak Travel Grant.  He will travel to Italy in June to study fresco painting. His studio is located in Hunter's MFA studio building in Tribeca, which opens it's doors to the public for open studios in the Fall and Spring semesters.

Stephanie Hightower (Director and Contemporary Art Issues Instructor) will be on leave this summer to teach at Technische Universität in Berlin, and will exhibit paintings and drawings in a 2-person show titled Urban Fabric at Project Space 35 Mommsenstrasse Berlin.

Simone Meltesen (Program Manager) completed her MFA in painting at Hunter College in May 2015, and most recently was included in the exhibition Recurrence, curated by Julie Lohnes, at the Mandeville Gallery at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Waldo Tejada (Marketing Strategist) contributes to many Cooper endeavors such as Typographics and Continuing Ed. He is an avid community worker interested in emerging social responsible business and cultural enterprises.

Emmanuela Soria Ruiz (Recruitment Rep) received her BFA from the Cooper Union in 2015 and was awarded the Sarah Cooper Hewitt Fund Prize for Excellence in Art upon graduation. She is working towards developing a sustainable studio practice every day after work.

Guest Artists

Mildred Beltré (Drawing) had a solo exhibition at Eli Marsh Gallery at Amherst College in September 2015, and installed a site specific installation in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as part of her collaborative public art project Hi! Art Machine.

Sam Chun (Drawing) is a printer and technician at The Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, where he teaches ukiyo-e and chine collé classes.  His thoughts on teaching in the pre-college program:

“Something I've learned from teaching is that something will click in some students, and it seems to be contagious. It tends to happen in the later half of the session, but when that something clicks in their work they need less and less instruction from me, and they begin to understand that they can have more autonomy with their work. That's when I think it's the most fun, when the class begins to be comprised of individual distinct flavors”.

Aurora De Armendi (Drawing) will return to the Summer Art Intensive following a six-month artist residency at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. She recently participated in this year’s Jamaica Flux: Workspaces and Windows, a large-scale exhibition of site-specific projects in Jamaica Queens.

Juan Villanueva (Graphic Design)  is an illustrator, letterer, motion, graphic, and type designer based in NYC. Originally from Peru, he graduated from the Type@Cooper Extended Program in 2014. He’s passionate about drawing letterforms, designing typefaces, making fonts, and learning about the history and stories behind them. His practice revolves around Typography.

Andrew Fillmore (Digital Photography) will have a solo show of new work at the Print Center in Philadelphia running from May 5 to August 30, titled This Time Is Always the Present. His work has been exhibited in Photo Center Northwest, Seattle, WA; Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Philadelphia, PA; and Le Festival Voies Off, Arles, France.

Haisi Hu (Animation) will show her animation Order/Entropy in the exhibition Fixed/Fluxed at Burlington City Arts Gallery this summer. Her work was also exhibited last summer alongside animations created by her students at BRIC gallery in Brooklyn.

Dave Johnson (Creative Writing) poet and playwright, will be teaching poetry workshops at the Poets House and the New York Society Library this Spring. His work teaching poetry workshops in probation waiting rooms was recently acknowledged by The Daily News.

Anne-Marie Mcintre (Drawing) had a solo exhibition of Drawings and Ceramics at bkbx Gallery in Gowanus, Brooklyn in April 2015.  Along with her studio work she is currently a mentor teacher with Studio in a School's Teen Apprenticeship Program working with high school students in New York City.

New faculty for Graphic Design and Contemporary Art Issues will be announced next week!

This July, in conjunction with the Cooper Union Summer Art Intensive, four artists will be in residence in the sixth-floor studios. Allison Malinsky, Daina Mattis, GaHee Park, and Leah Wolff were selected out of nearly one hundred applications by the Intensive's faculty and staff. Their proposed projects for this summer span interests from art historical feminisms, to sustainability, to formal and process-oriented concepts, and the studios will be their base for local research, as well as for working.

The Whole Earth Catalog is the focus of Wolff's investigation: she plans to produce a series of ceramic objects based on products and passages found in the popular late 60s publication, and explore its historical relationship to the pre-digital through multiple processes. Park's work also researches historical moments: her paintings are informed by the research of feminist art historians (like Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock) into the gendered dynamics of space, perspective, and subjectivity.

Deep investigations into formal concerns, and their relationship to the body, informs both Malinsky's and Mattis' work: the former creates three dimensional oil paintings that enact a kind of sculptural gesture, and the latter creates improbable objects that allude to drawing's multidimensional possibilities. 

With considerable exhibition experience (including shows at The Jewish Museum, Sculpture Center, and museums and galleries in the US and internationally), teaching experience, and a dedication to their practices, this year's  residents make the idea of a life of art making tangible to high school students. In turn, they hope to find inspiration in the northern light of the skylit space. Their works, installed in situ, will be on view at the beginning of August. 

In four short, but packed weeks, a peer group can be formed that can change a student’s outlook, prospects, and even college aspirations. I have witnessed for many seasons that sometimes nothing is more powerful than the positive critique and support from one’s own peers. We may think the best teaching matters most, and is indeed essential, but I believe, and have seen in the great educational experiment called Cooper Union, that profound achievement happens according to who you learn with. As obstacles are removed, obstructionist thinking is thrown out, students start seeing and believing that they can do better, and then do better - that is a priceless form of education.

The summer time is particularly special for students dreaming of college acceptance, particularly for admission to schools of art and design. Often art classes in community schools are underfunded or under scheduled. Finding mentorship, a role model, someone who supports talent, seriousness, and commitment, and who will act on behalf of those aspirations and goals is crucial. Committing the hours upon weeks to finish work, following through with art projects, is daunting and stressful enough, but almost impossible while attending high school full time. Learning from a gifted instructor and dedicated fellow students, can level the playing field of opportunity and readiness for young people destined for excellence as artists or designers. The Summer Art Intensive at Cooper Union creates an experience that places a select peer group at the center stage, at just the right time, to make their portfolio development the main priority.

Well beyond the exposure to technique, materials, and methods, we strive to turn critical thinking toward seeing and making. In the Contemporary Art Issues and Creative Writing Workshop students are given the chance to reflect and write about exhibitions, studio projects, poetry, and other shared experiences. A summer spent in a pre-college program is also the ideal place to extend the mentoring and advanced instruction begun by our partners teaching art in high schools in New York and beyond. We are committed to expanding that progress.

The summer is about immersion – the presentation of ideas about art and identifying those who make it. But just as importantly, it is about raising self-esteem, creating a safe space to be seen and heard, where opinions are respected. It is a privilege to share this very important time in a young person’s life to encourage invention, reflection and representation before college applications are due. I always advise that it is dangerous to be silent. Never deny yourself the responsibility to represent yourself with your own words and works. As young adults entering the adult world, never let anyone presume your goals or abilities. Declare them. Make all your trials worthy of your success. 

This is what the world wants to see
By Aviance Darrel

The careful breeze as i walk
The smooth words as i talk
The calm
Like I’m under a palm tree
As i believe
That this is me
The only me
From when i began trying to be
   independent
Which was three
Learning that
Every time i began to be aloof
Is the only proof
That this is me
And i want you to take this
To show others that i’m
This mixture
Or pure thoughts and chaos
All wrapped In this picture of me

Silver Light
By Suyang Liang

SILVER LIGHT cuts through the
   dark night
Wind blows like a sickle slamming the
   half-broken door
Old man sits in a toy store
Waiting and crying for his bony dog
Daytime bars lack allure
Drinkers wake up and wonder what they
   are here for
One holds a bottle leaning on a pole
And four more
Crops were destroyed by storm
Farmers got furious
Kids giggled and picked up those
   remaining coreIt’s
starring at me, pointing at swirls
   on a tree
The girl looked like a startled fawn

5 Magic Tricks for Making an Object Disappear
By Tammy Wei

1. Turn off all the lights
2. Step back until it is too small to see
3. Let go of it on a windy day
4. Place it down and forget where you left it
5. Repeat its name until the meaning is lost

It all seems so beautiful
By James Oliver

IT ALL SEEMS SO BEAUTIFUL from far
   away.
In photos, in paintings, in books,
   in stories, we longed for a place not
   within reach.
We wanted to adventure. We wanted for the world to be new once
   more, the burning crimson skies,
   a rainbow sea, the floating islands
   of ice.
We longed for that place, far away.
   We wanted to adventure. But the sky
   was a burning crimson from fire.
The rainbow sea shined from the oil that
   spilled.
The islands of ice from the ever growing
   heat of the sun.
And where were we?
We were just trying our best to survive,
   longing for a place that only existed
   in our most intimate depths.