drawing from nature

In our first block we worked outside drawing from nature.

Puppetry

On Tuesdays we work all day on puppetry. We are making the masks that will become the puppets for our production of "The Ramapo Salamander" in the spring.

comments

Here are some comments from our students: Free Columbia taught me to really step back and listen to what the colors on the page are saying instead of projecting myself onto them. This simple lesson can be applied to every aspect of life. Kim O’Keefe

My year in the Free Columbia Art Course gave me the insight I needed to pursue the journey into “the heart of artistic action” on my own as an individual artist, and the longing to forge artistic community relationships wherever I go. I remain connected to the ideals that gave rise to this inspiring art course, and am committed to supporting future Free Columbia students. Victoria Temple

Beginning the 4th year!

Report from Free Columbia The 2011-12 year of Free Columbia was very active. Eleven full time students finished the program of painting, drawing and puppetry in June with an exhibit of the year’s work held at a space next to the Family Dollar store in Philmont, NY. This exhibit in the middle of the town was reflective of our year which saw us moving out into the world around us. Beside our 11 full time students, 10 people participated part time, approximately 50 people took summer courses and another 150 attended evening lectures and events. Our summer conference, concerned with artistic experience and the future of art, was held at the Basilica Hudson in Hudson NY and was attended by 45 people from many countries including Finland, Israel, Italy and France. In May we held our first Art Dispersal, inviting people to become stewards of original art, to take it home and live with it for an unspecified time. We dispersed 120 paintings both locally and to people who will take them all over the world. Our puppet show of Rip Van Winkle using 10 foot tall puppets was shown at the public school to over 1200 children as well as outdoor performances in the Philmont Village Green. Like a little boat crafted at home, Free Columbia is beginning its journey into the world. Our vision for a community supported, accessible to all arts initiative really landed in the third year. Our $69,029 in expenses was covered by $69,937 in donations by individuals and organizations who believe in and support what we are doing. All of our activities were accessible regardless of a person’s financial situation. Sometimes the funding ran disconcertingly low but we sent out appeals, traveled to give courses in other areas, organized events and the funding came in each time. This approach is often challenging, sometimes unnerving, but the benefits of offering artistic work without financial restrictions is overwhelmingly inspiring and productive. In September we started our fourth year with seven fulltime and ten part time students. Thanks to all of you who through you understanding and support are making this work possible.

End of the year exhibit

landscape devotion

For the last block of the year we devoted ourselves to an aspect of the world around us. We started with a tree and then each student chose something that they would like to explore - mountains, dandelions, butterfly wings, pathways are some examples.

Sculpture

In April Dan Pate came to work with us teaching how to work with light weight concrete sculpture.

image and luster colors

This year we began this block by exploring the image colors. Black, White, Green and Peach Blossom. Used together they create a very particular mood. Then we moved to the luster colors: Red, Blue and Yellow, in various combinations.

new video

A friend has made a new video about Free Columbia. you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CxdKPHCbNc

Color and Space

We entered into oil painting and color perspective.  It was about becoming more sensitive.  
 
We started by observing objects and models and rendering what we saw on paper. To do this we used charcoal, then various shades of watercolor paint.  We simplified the broad and differentiated field of vision into simple areas which we created with a few shades of paint and then the white of our paper.  Gradually we increased the subtlety of our shading.  Eventually we looked at our flat paper and saw figures in space, we saw light and dark relationships which had come out of spatial observation.  This is something quite interesting, experiencing space on a two dimensional surface.  Then we took these sketches and transformed dark areas into depth by using colors which distance themselves from us.  We rendered the light areas with colors which approach us. The three dimensional space which had been our point of departure disappeared.  In its wake a new space opened.  The figures came apart.  The more flat we painted the more this new space opened out and in.   Instead of a static and empty physical space, a color space appeared, a depth with an abundance of content, a space filled with life and moods.

             This was our goal, bringing to awareness the threshold between the flat life of color and form, and sculptural experience of three dimensional space.  From one perspective, the more flat colors are, the more they are not.

2012/13

Free Columbia is open for applications for the 2012/13 year from March 1 to May 1!
application forms are on our website:http://www.freecolumbia.org/applying-and-contacts.php

Summer Courses 2012

Free Columbia Summer Art Courses

3 courses with renowned and inspiring musician and visual artist - Manfred Bleffert
Color and music through the circle of the year
June 16-22 – Instrument Building - The breathing process of the earth, and of the cosmos, as a musical base for the development of new instruments and musical form. We will make iron and copper gongs and Glockenspiele

June 25-29 – New Music Improvisation - What does music want to become now and in the future? And what is North America’s role in the development of new music? With Manfred’s guidance, we will explore these questions together through ever-varied improvisation and listening exercises. Using both our own instruments and Manfred’s uniquely designed new instruments (chimes, gongs, Glockenspiele, among others), we will bring to consciousness the elements of musical breathing and listening that allow new musical experiences to come to birth. In this co-creative process, each individual contributes to the breathing, listening, and sounding within the group. All experience levels welcome!

July 2-6 – Color and Tone in Relation to Rudolf Steiner’s Soul Calendar Using painting and music we will explore the cycle of the year in creative process. We will work with the relationships of color and tone in the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner. We will see what is revealed in gesture and movement when we enter the world of tone, color, sound and form as we follow the course of the year.



Manfred Bleffert has dedicated his life to developing new music. His work includes a unique approach to graphic notation, composition and instrument building. His research is both broad and profound. His compositions are improvisational and unique. He is both a musician and a visual artist and a dynamic and inspiring teacher.



July 14-18
5 days of experimental work with color, light, music and puppetry
with Laura Summer, Nathaniel Williams, Faye Shapiro and Marisa Michelson

July 23-27
Seeing the Word through Painting
a workshop with Laura Summer

Working with poems and stories as well as watercolor, pastel, charcoal, and collage we will explore this subject. Through relaxing our expectations, while playfully manipulating our media, we will experience the realm of creation and develop skills for our further work.




July 23-27
Orientation Toward an Inner Voice
Vocal Experimentation with Composed and Improvised Music with Marisa Michelson and Faye Shapiro
The lands of the soul open up and show themselves to us- we see them with our imagination, we travel them with our voices... With exercises aimed to free the body and awaken the soul we will explore possibilities given to us in the voice. We will improvise together and compose music in real time, we will try to find a relationship to music inside, around and outside of ourselves with the aid of imagining. All that needed is the desire to sing.

All of the work at Free Columbia is based on an understanding of the importance of creating a free cultural space, therefore there are no set tuitions. Rather we offer suggested donation amounts based on what it costs to run courses. If you prefer it is possible to make a monthly pledge to support Free Columbia rather than making a one time donation.
A commodity fee of $180 will be charged to each participant in the instrument building workshop. This fee is related to your being able to take home the instrument you build. This fee is in addition to the suggested donation.
5 day courses suggested donation $250 – 450
instrument building fee = $180
all supplies are included but not housing or food
contact: Laura Summer 518 672 7302 laurasummer@taconic.net

Imagination

We taught the Imagination block this year in two parts. Each group of students worked with Nathaniel and Laura in separate 3 week blocks. With Nathaniel the work was in black and white, starting by indiscriminately developing imaginative elements in drawing and then discriminating and creating specific imaginations and finally working with a text or story. With Laura we started with a poem and a story and gradually worked into a color mood and composition in relation to the 2 texts we were using.

from the seminary

A Moment in a Week of Color

There is something exhilarating for me in meeting new people, especially people with whom I am going to share an experience. This excitement of being in a new place with a new group of people set the mood for our week in Hillsdale, New York, with the students in Free Columbia – a year-long painting training with Laura Summer and Nathaniel Williams. For this week we worked with the color wheel: painting colors, walking as colors, speaking as colors, and creating color sculptures. We also learned about the Threefold Social Organism with Seth Jordan.
One thing that stood out for me in all of this color work is how colors are affected and affect each other. Blue is Blue, and yet somehow Blue is different when painted on the page in a conversation with Green. Blue is again different when it meets Violet on the page. Blue is Blue, yet it is changed. How can this be? How can something be what it is, and also be completely different depending upon whom or what it is meeting? Just as I experienced the colors being changed by their environment, I also experienced myself changed. In the farmland and autumn foliage of upstate New York, the people there and the first snow of the year, everything felt fresh and new, and I was able to experience myself again with new eyes. We returned to Chestnut Ridge with arms full of paintings to decorate with, and I returned with a new experience of color, with new friends, changed, and still…Me.

—Kimber Martinson

Free Columbia and the Seminary of the Christian Community share a week of color.

Free Columbia Art Course opened with 6 weeks exploring color, we steeped in it for 15 hours each week. After such intense experience you can image the surprise to discover that the simple color explorations we engaged with the Christian Community Seminary students were so profoundly revealing. Imagine walking like RED, saying "Hello" like BLUE or filling yourself with YELLOW. Try creating a human sculptural representation of the color wheel or capturing the moods of traveling from one color to another as they circle the wheel. These simple but earnest explorations allowed each individual to develop a personal relationship with the colors, but, equally important was that our individual explorations, when shared, enriched and deepened into objective understandings about the character and qualities of each color and their relationships with each other.

Both groups met and worked harmoniously from the start and through the guidance of our instructors, wove an atmosphere of mutual trust, exploration, inquiry and playfulness. The work together served as both an out breathing of our intense work in respective areas of study and an in breathing of the deeper qualities of color in our outer and inner worlds.
Lisa Damian, full time Free Columbia student

Free Columbia goes to the Met

On October 21st we all went to New York city to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to observe and draw art from the time of ancient Greece.

first block - general color course

In the first block we studied color relationships. In the first week, working outside, we first listened to the world around us. Then we did gatherings of color. In the second week we explored color mixing and layering, seeing how the different colors arise through overlapping. We built a color wheel that progressed from the clear colors outside to the tertiary colors on the inside of the wheel. In the third week we worked with Goethe's color wheel, learning the lawfulness of color arising out of dark and light. In the fourth week each student chose a pair of colors to explore, and began to learn the technique of layered watercolor.

3 weeks in

The studio is full with 12 full time and many part time students. We are renovating the barn at the Columbia House because we do not have enough space at Bright Wing. This is a great problem to have! and it inspires patience and camaraderie but we are glad the end is in sight. Here are some photos from the first days of the year.

Third year!

On the evening of September 26th we will welcome in the third year of the Free Columbia Art Course. Classes will start on Tuesday September 27th with 12 fulltime and approximately 10 part time students as well as many other people participating in evening study, and community lectures. We are very excited that this community supported art course is growing and that our 12 full time students have moved here from many places, (including Hawaii and Belgium), to begin to study with us. If you live locally please welcome them to our area and keep them in mind if you need someone to do part time work for you.

We know that we are surrounded by a very supportive community both near and far away, and this allows us to bring this course into being. If you live locally and are interested in part time study, evening lectures or summer courses, this year we will offer a year long study of the Philosophy of Aesthetics from Goethe’s time to the present on Tuesday evenings, and a study of “Theosophy” by Rudolf Steiner on Thursday evenings. If you are interested in joining either of these studies please contact us.

During the summer courses one of our participants suggested that we ask everyone to consider making a monthly pledge to support Free Columbia and then we could dispense with suggested donations for courses. So with this letter we are asking everyone, students, study group participants, library members and interested observers, to consider this. Monthly support allows us to plan our courses with a realistic relationship to finances but more importantly it makes obvious to us that we are surrounded and carried by a community. This experience makes all the difference in bringing this course into existence. It is possible to have your pledge automatically deducted from your bank account, (form attached) or paid automatically from your credit card or you can send it to us or bring it in if you see us regularly. Which ever option works for you, know that each month we know of your support and it makes the work possible.

Checks can be made out to Hawthorne Valley Association (memo: Free Columbia) and sent to Free Columbia, 651 Harlemville RD, Hillsdale NY 12529

If you prefer to pay via credit card over the internet you can do so by going to www.hawthornevalleyassociation.org Follow the “Donate Now “ button, choose your payment method, provide the information required and last of all click the “Designation” button and scroll down to Free Columbia in order to be sure that your donation reaches us.

If you would like, we are willing to send out a monthly pledge reminder via email.

We are happy to report that we already have 9 people making monthly pledges.

We are trying to create a library for our students. If you have any of the following books that you would like to donate please let us know:
Schiller - Letters upon the Æsthetic Education of Man
On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry
Steiner - Theosophy
Color Lectures
Goethe as a Founder of a New Aesthetic Science
Art as Spiritual Activity
Art in the Light of Mystery Wisdom
The Mission of the Arts
The Renewal of the Social Organism
Volker Harlan & Joseph Beuys –
What is Art?
Gottfried Richter – Art and Human Consciousness

Also, if you have old art supplies that you do not want we would be happy to put them to use.

Thanks to all of you for your interest and support. If you would like to follow our blog you may do so here and yes we can also be seen on face book. But you can always feel free to call us on the telephone.
Laura Summer 518 672 7302, Nathaniel Williams 518 672 4090

Schedules are on our website: www.freecolumbia.org

Our gratitude and heart felt wishes to you, Laura and Nathaniel

August Conference

here is a link to the web album from our August Conference, Image Arts from the Perspective of Spiritual Reality:

https://picasaweb.google.com/103588655269987228457/AugustConferenceImageArtFromThePerspectiveOfSpiritualReality

pictures from the summer courses

This year over 40 people participated in summer courses at Free Columbia.