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Low-Cost Art Classes for Middle School Students in East Boston
EAST BOSTON, MA - Jul 6, 2009 - East Boston, Mass. area middle
school students are invited to the Cultural Exchange Center at 80
Border Street for a four-week art class entitled "Basic Sketching
for Beginners" beginning Tuesday, July 14th from 2 to 3 pm. The same
class will be taught on Sundays from 7 to 9 pm starting July 19th.
No previous art education is required. Materials
will be provided. Classes will be taught by Jessie Mann, an art
teacher in the Boston Public Schools.
Cost for the four-week program is $20 ($5 per
hour-long class) if attending either Tuesday or Sunday classes. Cost
to attend both Tuesday and Sunday classes is $40.
"Basic sketching classes are what the community
has been asking for and that's what we will give them," said Ernie
Torgersen, Executive Director of the CulturalExchangeCenter. "Our
art classes in the past were very successful and people want more.
Jessie's classes will be followed by year-round classes for all
levels, all media, and all ages over the coming years."
The 80 Border Street Cultural Exchange Center -
which resides within the AtlanticWorksBuilding with its majestic
view of the inner Boston harbor and the bridge over the MysticRiver
- is a non-profit performing, visual and literary arts center
dedicated to the educational and cultural needs of East Boston and
surrounding communities, as well as visitors to the Boston area. The
center supports a meaningful exchange of ideas, a chance to
discover, to create, to learn, to be inspired and to inspire others.
For more information on "Sketching for Beginners",
phone Ernie Torgersen at (617) 599-0383.
###
Interview Contact: Ernie Torgersen
Telephone: (617) 599-0383
eMail:
erniet02128@verizon.net
Biography
Mann became a
familiar presence in contemporary art in the 1990s through the
photographs taken of her and her two siblings by their mother, Sally
Mann. Commenting on Jessie's more recent modeling for the
photographer Len Prince, the New Yorker said it is "as if one of
Velázquez's infantas had grown up and sat for Rembrandt". The
project with Prince is a collaborative exploration of the social and
cognitive dimensions of artistic practice, identity and
canon-building themes which Jessie also tackles in her writing
(recently, an essay in the journal Aperture) and painting. This work
debuted in September at Danziger Projects in NY and traveled to the
Adamson Gallery in Washington, D.C. The work was featured in the
Washington Post. The show traveled to Chicago where it was displayed
by the Catherine Edelman Gallery. Accompanying the exhibition,
Jessie gave a lecture and slide show at the Chicago Institute of
Art. The work was most recently seen at the Faye Gold Gallery in
Atlanta.
Having studied
locally, as she was growing up in Lexington (with the encouragement
of family friends Cy Twombly and Sam Messer, each in his different
way a profoundly challenging and renewing force in American art),
Jessie returned full-time to painting after concentrating on the
sciences at George School (Newtown, Pennsylvania) and obtaining a
degree in psychology from Washington and Lee University.
Her academic studies
in perception, memory, and the establishment of subjectivity feed
into her paintings, described by the Roanoke Times as resembling
"abstract landscapes". They are produced using oils, latex, enamels,
and ink on canvas; Masonite is also frequently used as a ground in
the artist's pursuit of more varied textural effects.
Jessie's works have
been shown in group shows at the XYZ Gallery in Blacksburg,
Virginia, and Zone Chelsea in New York City. She has had solo shows
at Nelson Fine Arts in Lexington, Studio Swan in Georgia and at the
Reynolds Gallery in RichmondVirginia. Most recently she has shown at
the Longview Gallery in Washington, DC where she now lives.
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