Arts in NYC is a mandatory, first-year course at Guttman Community College that I wrote before the college opened. Using my background in Art History and Studio Art from my undergraduate studies, my experiences as an art educator from Literacy Through Photography and the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, and my years of taking high school students to museums, I wrote a course in which weekly topics are experienced in the art world through an out-of-class visit to a museums, monuments, and excursions.
Arts in NYC is taught during our winter semester, therefore it meets 3x/week for 2 hours per class. Each week the students have two classes in the building and one “class” outside of the building. The biggest challenge to this schedule is the NYC winter and cold weather, but we manage.
Faculty who have taught this course have taken students all over the city, and, as a college, we have been supported by additional funds to provide theater, dance, film, comedy, and other experiences for our students. Additionally, our college has an artist-in-residence program and is very open to paying stipends for many of our artist friends to come into the classroom to work with students, even if only for one class. Below I will briefly discuss having an artist come to the classroom for a one-day visit and having an artist-in-residence in the classroom:
Holly Nordlum–Inuit Artist, Indigenous Tattooer
What students don’t love tattooing right now? I met Holly Nordlum through my friend Tonio Nguyen when I took students to Anchorage, Alaska (for more info on this trip, go here). One of our students was studying tattooing in youth culture between NYC and Anchorage, and Tonio set up a morning with Holly to learn about Indigenous tattooing and for her to do henna tattoos on the students. When I heard she was coming to NYC to participate in an Indigenous Arts Festival, I reached out and she was able to come to our Arts in NYC classes (compensated, of course). She talked to us about indigenous tattooing, why the word eskimo is = the n-word (don’t say it), women and community, and henna-tattooed the students. After class she gave me a real stick-and-poke tattoo on my arm, and about a dozen students stayed to watch.
Reading left-to-right from top: Holly explaining the geography of the Arctic Circle to students, Holly henna-ing tundra sprouts on students, students with their tundra sprouts (a symbol of resilience), other henna options were anti-drowning medallions (I never considered how many Arctic tribes never learn to swim b/c the water is too cold), Holly doing a stick-and-poke series of dots around my arm.
Julia Vandenoever: Artist-in-Residence, Photography
Disclaimer: Julia is one of my closest friends. Years ago, when the artist-in-residence program was growing, my colleague who was running it asked for artist suggestions, specifically a photographer, and I recommended Julia. She came to Guttman three times to work with our students. The last winter she was able to come (2019), I was teaching two sections of Arts in NYC and I requested her to be my classes’ visiting artist.
Julia and I had worked together at Literacy Through Photography (LTP) in the late 90s, so we decided to employ one of the LTP ideas and have students photograph their dreams. We also set up a studio so that Julia could photograph the students and each student could work 1:1 with her. We ended her residency with a crit so that students could experience an alternative form of summative assessment. The dreams and images produced were astounding:
[Photos in the second block Copyright Julia Vandenoever, shared with permission by the artist]
Lori Ungemah 