Marie Webb's first oil painting "N and Chips" (Renee Forrestall's oldest daughter)

"Maries 1st oil painting based on her photo of her father Nick and her dog, "N and Chips" says her mom, Renee Forrestall. "Marie framed it in an old frame we had. She did it for her final 1st Term 12th grade project. The art teacher is hanging it in the main office at school. She showed me Marie's other paintings and there are some things going on it her work -like lined up flowers, patterns and interesting angles and perspectives. The art teacher is "Bonnie Aalders" /AKA Ms. P.   one of Halifax's best -  a top grad from NSCAD U's Art Ed. Here's her teaching website: http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/bonita/

We'll be looking for Marie's prom dress soon,

she already had her graduation photos taken. We are so very proud!

I love the elbow in this, the teacher pointed out the think gobs of paint around the fingers where it shows movement like strumming, " says Renee Forrestall.
Nick (dad) on guitar with Chips the dog.

Marie touches up the gold leaf on her found frame. 



Marie attaching the wire on the back of the frame.

All ready for hanging! Isn't it beautiful!  
---Monica Forrestall (proud aunt)

Marie Webb is a happy, well adjusted teenager, who is a wonderful painter, and happens to have Downs Syndrome.

"Unreadable Books" an Art Book making workshop with Max and friends at Artbook@X

My friend Sarah had allerted me that on Saturday, January 16th a most interesting art book-making workshop was taking place at Artbook@X on West 22nd street, here in NY. The workshop was led by Pietro Corraini who makes extraordinary artful books for children. Pietro's goal was to show children (and their parents) how to make a book without words or images.

Pietro, who ran the workshop with Ilaria Rodella, began by showing many examples of mini books, all made without words, using very interesting materials like: clear plastic pages, flat sponges for pages, felt, vellum and pages that are cut in order to see through to the next page in some way.

Then Pietro invited the children to spread out at the two tables, which were laden with piles of interesting art materials of all sorts, from markers and glue to containers of white rice and piles of fluffy cotton balls.
The only rule in putting together the book seemed to be that there were no rules; other than not using any words.





Below: Joseph (right) and Max (center) pay close attention to Pietro's instructions, and flip through the sample books Pietro passed around.

The poster for the event.










Instructor Pietro, Max, Davis and his mom, Tamra.

Max and Davis both chose to make Star Wars stories, all without text.  Davis chose to use a long, rolling out scroll-like piece of paper for his story. He described it as giving ideas for TV shows. Max
drew scenes like a story board for a film, on graph paper, which he bound by clipping together with a large black clip.


Max's book "The Mendolrians".

The girls work away on their books. 
When all the children were finished with their books, they were invited to come up and talk about them.

Max points out pages from his book. Max's friends Davis and Joseph also discuss their books.

Below: Joseph talks about his book.

below: Davis talks about his interesting scroll-style book.

A fun part for parents going to the workshops is that they are often invited to "make their own projects as well"...here is my all white materials book, made with vellum paper.

This page (above) has white string and flat cotton pads on the left, and paper cut into a cloud shape with a metal hanger hanging from it, below are three circular cotton pads and a flattened pile of white rice, glued down.

On this page is a spaghetti like pile of white string, glued down on the left, and on the right hand page, several metal doll hangers, hovering above a pulled apart cotton ball, which is glued down.








Below: The last two pages are more piles of white strings glued down. 

A New York Art World party's unexpected meeting with a Mount Allison Alumni

The last place I would have expected to meet a Mount Allison University Fine Arts alumni from the tiny town of Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada was at an intimate gathering to honor a dear friend about to embark on an overseas trip and well known NYC painter, Joanne Greenbaum.Joanne's paintings are directly below and a link to her last show in NYC is here  http://www.damelioterras.com/exhibition.html?id=57 . (Joanne is leaving for Berlin for a 7-month European adventure of art viewing, travel and painting with her pup Sheeba in tow).

But half way through a long conversation with another guest (the talented, smart and humorous artist, Louise Belcourt) that started with health care reform in the US and segued to Canada's health care, which led her to say,  "I'm Canadian" and me to say "Me too." Then I mentioned I was headed to Toronto for a museum and gallery opening of my dad's in a couple of weeks. She asked "Who is your dad"? I said, "Tom Forrestall", and she said oooohh! Then to our conversation companion, "Her father is a really famous Canadian painter". Then she said to me, I went to school with your brother (William Forrestall). I said "Really?" Then, "wow, I said,I went to Mt Allison for a year too." It's a wee small world we live in. And when you get into certain worlds it gets smaller and smaller. So now, of course, Louise and I are hooked up internet-wise with plans to meet up. Louise's work is interestingly landscape-as-a-starting-point based.

Some of her very early work is quite representational. One of her paintings is at right and to take a look at more of her work check out her website here:
http://louisebelcourt.net/

Louise lives part of the year in a house she owns in Quebec, and the rest of the year in Brooklyn , NY and I am very excited to see her upcoming show at Jeff Bailey gallery in Chelsea later this spring

http://www.baileygallery.com/artists_02.cfm?fid=91

--Monica Forrestall

Georgia O'Keefe: Composition and Composing workshop at The Whitney Museum with Max & Mummy

My son Max and I signed up for one of the fantastic workshops today that they hold every 2 months at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, through the Spring and Fall/Winter season. The workshop leader was Rachelle  and we found ourselves with a group or 9 other 2nd grade boys and girls. Rachelle, a museum assistant in the education dept, sat on the floor of the very busy Georgia O'Keefe show (it closes January 17th and has gotten rave reviews) and talked with the children about what one thinks about when one sits down to make art---what decisions does one make. Looking at Georgia's paintings in one of the gallery rooms, Rachelle focused on a group of three paintings, which the artist created in Lake George, of a simple composition of a shell and a piece of shingle sitting on her bureau in her bedroom. A minimal grouping but in each of the three paintings, the imagery became looser and more abstract. The one of the far left was quite realistically rendered with a large defined white shell in the foreground and a grey shingle leaning against the wall while the one on the far right the elements were reduced to hazy shapes, almost blending into the background. Rachelle, through questions and talk, led the children to make this discovery and think about it. Then the group of children moved into another gallery, and we all sat in front of three versions of OKeefe's Jack-in-a-Pulpit painting (left was a painting in the show "Jack in the Pulpit" 1930 on loan from the National Gallery of Art, DC). Here the children analyzed how Georgia, zoomed in on a particular flower, and that in each painting, from left to right, the imagery became more abstract as she focused in on it.

From the www.mystudios.co website I learnt "O'Keeffe had been fascinated by the microcosm of a flower ever since her schooldays in Madison, where her art teacher had brought a jack-in-the-pulpit into the classroom for the pupils to study." Rachelle (right in dark sweater) then handed out small black and white xeroxes of one of the Jack-in-the-pulpit paintings and a piece of blank paper, as well as a bag of colored pencils to each child. She asked them to place the small image of the painting anywhere on the piece of paper, and then creatively expand on the drawing, creating whatever environemnt around it they wanted to.  To "branch out", so to speak, with their colored pencils and put that image into a larger environment.
                                                                             Rachelle explains the drawing exercise with the Jack-and-the-pulpit image. 

Max draws an expanded tree added onto the base of the Jack-in-the-pulpit. The drawing below.


All of the children's drawings were very different, from very involved environments to more abstract and minimal marks. Visitors wandering through the show stopped to watch the kids at work. 

(Below) The materials the children had to work with in the Whitney's childrens studio room. Here, from left, a cut out view finder, interesting photographic images cut from Natural Geographic type magazines, pencils, and white paper. 
Then we all went down to the studio room, so the children could work on the big art project of the day, related to everything the children had seen and learnt. Rachelle explained that she wanted the children to choose one of the interesting photographic images from nature, from the piles of images placed on each of the large tables, then use the view finder to find a section/piece of it that they would work with. Next she asked them first to sketch this section out with pencil on white paper. Once they had done that, she passed out beautiful heavy watercolor paer, pastels and water soluble pastels for the children to work with. And they all, very enthusiastically, got busy!

(Left) Max and the other children listen very attentively as Rachelle explains all the different materials, how to use them and the object of this art exercise. 



(Right) Max works on a sketch of his zoom in focus on a stripped fish, then transfers it into pastel onto good paper (below).

Max works on a drawing of a sunrise with water soluble pastels 

in the lovely childrens studio rooms of the Whitney. Max loved this material.

Some press description of the Georgia O'Keefe show from the Whitney's website:
Although Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) has long been celebrated as a central figure in twentieth-century art, the abstract works she created throughout her career have remained overlooked by critics and the public in favor of her representational subjects. In 1915, O’Keeffe leaped into abstraction with a group of charcoal drawings that were among the most radical creations produced in the United States at that time. In these and subsequent abstractions, O’Keeffe sought to transcribe her ineffable thoughts and emotions. While her output of abstract work declined after 1930, she returned to abstraction in the mid-1940s with a new vocabulary that provided a precedent for a younger generation of abstractionists. By devoting itself to this largely unexplored area of her work, Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction is an overdue acknowledgment of her place as one of America’s first abstract artists.

The exhibition includes more than 125 paintings, drawings, watercolors, and sculptures by O’Keeffe as well as selected examples of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous photographic portrait series of O’Keeffe. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by the organizers, excerpts from the recently unsealed Stieglitz-O’Keeffe correspondence, and a contextual chronology of O’Keeffe’s art and life.

Tom Forrestall retrospective opens at The McMichael Collection in Ontario

Dad has a museum opening at the end of the month at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.

The exhibition is curated by Tom Smart, the Executive Director of the museum. 

Tom Forrestall: Paintings, Drawings, Writings

Organized and circulated by the
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
January 30 to April 25, 2010

Explore the “magical realism” of Tom Forrestall’s paintings, drawings, and journal sketchbooks by examining themes of nature and tensions between reality and the imagination. This retrospective exhibition chronicles the artist’s curious observation and exploration of his surroundings, the nature of his creativity, and the source of his visions, through his works.

 More information on this exhibition

Tom Forrestall (b. 1936)
Time of the Storm, 2004
egg tempera on gessoed panel
121.5 x 60.5 cm
Collection of the Artist

Max Forrestall Schuss directs his first stop-action film

Max got a Fuji digital camera for Christmas that you can also create video with. So Max and his dad have been working on a movie today.  Max wrote the script. Kerry set up the table and did the lighting. And read and interpreted the camera manual.

Max took a film making class at PS234 After-School program and really loved it. In his film making class he was the actor, but now he is making all the decisions. Seems he likes the behind the camera role.


--Monica Forrestall

Video link below to Max talking about his set as he designs it.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MonicaForrestall#p/a/u/0/GzGoeLIuk4Q