Lockdown & Beyond: Student/Instructor

Thursday, October 29, 6-7:30PM

Nancy Puchner will take you back in time, in 1874, Winslow Homer sketched a portrait of Montaukett Chief David Pharaoh in watercolor and pencil. This Long Island portrait is one of Homer’s only known depictions of Indian subject matter. In his time, Homer was routinely lauded as a genuine artist who “painted what he saw.” Although Homer’s drawing of Pharaoh suggests this characteristic truthfulness, it also constructs a stereotype of Pharaoh as the “last” remaining member of the Montaukett nation, even as this nation was nowhere near extinction at that time. This talk will explore Homer’s portrait, namely the tension between the artist’s characteristic faithfulness to what he painted and the tendency of artists of his time to manipulate the identity of Indian subjects. 

She currently works as an advisor in the University Scholars Program at Stony Brook University. Nancy has also been a professor of Art History for the past ten years, teaching courses on American art, contemporary art, and Indigenous art. Her most recent research and scholarship focuses on modern and contemporary Native art, the representation of Indigenous Americans in U.S. cultural production, and teaching Native Art in a postcolonial world. Her forthcoming essay in Art History Pedagogy and Practice explores the voice of Native students in the art history classroom. And a forthcoming book co-edited by Puchner, Aesthetics of Intervention: Federal Governments and Native Art across North America, contains a series of essays that explore the intersection of Native art and federal policy in twentieth-century Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. 

Image of Winslow Homer.

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Thursday, November 12, 7-8:30PM

Ned Puchner will focus on the African American artist Horace Pippin (1888-1946) and his 1943 painting Mr. Prejudice. It will consider this painting against Pippin’s life, the history of the African American press, and the changing Social Gospel approach of the African American church. It asks why Pippin portrayed Mr. Prejudice with emblems of America’s cultural racism and those of its military racism, and links this work to others within Pippin’s oeuvre. 

This case study of Horace Pippin also examines the role of the black press and its new tone of confidence during World War II as well. Looking to the wartime press, it considers, in particular, the significance of the Double V campaign from 1943; a rhetoric calling for victory over racism at home and for victory in the war abroad. I demonstrate how it became a racial symbol with spiritual implications, and point to its appearance in one of Pippin’s paintings, arguing that it also provided a model for Mr. Prejudice. 

Ned's talk will highlight Mr. Prejudice to argue that Horace Pippin understood issues of prejudice, equality, and racial patriotism in religious terms based on the details of his faith, his background, his self-professed divine inspiration, the wartime press, and the increased activity of the Social Gospel within the African American church.

Edward (Ned) Puchner is the Executive Director for Gallery North, a not-for-profit fine art gallery in Setauket, New York. An arts advocate and scholar, prior to joining the staff at Gallery North, Puchner worked at a variety of museums, galleries, and cultural non-profits, including the Greenville Museum of Art (NC), the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, National Gallery of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, earning a doctorate in Art History from Indiana University in 2012. He has received fellowships from the Frederick Douglass Institute at the University of Rochester, the Luce Foundation and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and has published articles and reviews for Raw Vision magazine and served as a contributor to a number of exhibition catalogs. His research interests include African American art, American modernism, contemporary art, folk/self-taught/outsider art, and the material culture of American religions.

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Atelier art instructor Bill Graf will provide a master copy demonstration of John Singer Sargent's Gondeliers Siesta illustrating his painting techniques. During the demonstration, Bill will talk about Sargent's life and his transition from painting primarily in oils to watercolor, later in his career.

Bill Graf is an art instructor for The Atelier at Flowerfield teaching oil and watercolor classes in studio and online. He studied at the Arts Student League in NYC and the Cecil Graves Academy, Florence, Italy. He works as a fine artist and an illustrator.

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Atelier art instructor Christian White will host a lecture about the evolution of color as a decorative and structural tool in Painting among post-Academic painters who influenced Christian. Artists like Manet and artists like: Fantin-Latour, Sargent, Sorolla, Matisse, Gorky, de Kooning, Phillip Guston, Diebenkorn, Fairfield Porter, Wolf Kahn, et alia. He will attempt to explain some of the underlying concepts of Modernism from the point of view of color.  

Thursday, January 14, 7:00PM

See lecture video below. 

Join our new Atelier art instructor, Elizabeth Fusco, in a Fascination with Flowers online webinar.
From herbal plants to roses, artists have been fascinated by plant life for hundreds of years. Long before cameras existed, artists used scientific illustrations to document elements of the natural world- plants, animals, and the birds and the bees. Learn why this tradition is not only continuing today, but how a renewed interest in Botanical Illustration is thriving in the contemporary art community.

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Join Helen Harrison as she describes the work done by Lee Krasner, a close companion to Jackson Pollock.
During Lee Krasner's fourteen-year relationship with Jackson Pollock, she worked in close proximity to him, either under the same roof or in his former studio in their house in Springs. After his death, she took over his barn studio on the Springs property. Helen will discuss how her artistic development was influenced by working in those spaces.

See demo below