This spring Guild members the Joan Mitchell Foundation (JMF) and Elders Share the Arts (ESTA) partnered with Jacob Riis Neighborhood Settlement House to pilot a Friday morning art class with senior citizens from the Queensbridge community in Long Island City, Queens. Teaching artists from all three organizations work together in an effort to bring each art class closer to the seniors' life experiences. Class participants are asked to bring in family photos to be photocopied and used for a mixed-media painting project. Students are also encouraged to bring in creative projects that they are working on at home.
The partnership also brings the seniors to cultural organizations within their community and across the city, ensuring that art appreciation, as well as art creation, is a part of their students' experience. Many seniors from the class participated in an art program at the Noguchi Museum, an LIC museum and sculpture garden. Later this summer the group will take a trip to the Museum of Modern Art.
About the Joan Mitchell Foundation
The Joan Mitchell Foundation was established in April 1993 as a not-for-profit corporation following the death of Joan Mitchell in October 1992. The Foundation strives to fulfill the ambitions of Joan Mitchell to aid and assist the needs of contemporary artists and to demonstrate that painting and sculpture are significant cultural necessities.
Additional programs undertaken by the Foundation include free art classes for New York City youth, an annual grant to painters & sculptors, and grants to artists and arts communities in need of emergency support after a disaster. The Foundation is in the process of establishing an artists residency program at the new Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans
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About Elders Share the Arts
Elders Share the Arts (ESTA), an award-winning community arts organization, is dedicated to helping elders in greater New York find and unleash their innate creativity as a catalyst for personal enrichment and community-building through the discovery, artistic expression and sharing of their life experiences.
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