About Us
The Saturday Program offers six free studio art courses enrolling over 200 New York City Public High School students. Most classes meet from 10:00am to 5:00pm on Saturdays for two semesters, October through April. This schedule provides the intensive working time necessary to explore media, technique and concept for both the beginner and the student with art experience.
To encourage access for all students materials are provided at no charge.
Courses offered for grades 9-12 are: Drawing, Painting, Graphic Design, Sculpture, and Architecture. Students do not need prior experience, only motivation and a written application required.
(Students who’ve attended the Saturday Program must re-apply, admissions guaranteed as space permits.)
For High School Seniors our 2 semester Portfolio Preparation class provides support to successfully compete for admissions to art and architecture colleges. (Held 9am-5pm) This intensive studio course includes individual advisement and studio visits with professional artists. Applicants to the Portfolio class must attend an informal work review on October 7th (please see the flyer for details).
All Saturday Program classes make field trips to museums, galleries, and artists’ studios. Creative writing workshops are integrated into the visual arts curriculum. Each year the program culminates in April with an Exhibition and Spoken Word Performance (to which you are cordially invited).
For more information please email or call the Saturday Program Office at 212-353-4108.
New York City Public High Schools interested in September recruitment visits may contact Aisha Bell.
Note: The Saturday Program Office’s new temporary location is the Cooper Union Engineering Building rm155, 51 Astor place New York NY 10003 (8th street between 3rd and 4th avenues.)
Staff BIOS
Instruction in each discipline is provided by teams of Cooper undergraduate students supported by the Program’s professional staff of artists and writers.
Marina Gutierrez Saturday Program Director Saturday Outreach Program Co-Director An alumnus of Cooper Union, Gutierrez is a New York City artist working in studio, public and community arts. Director of Saturday Program since 1981, her involvement in community arts began in a range of settings, urban to rural, from NYC to Puerto Rico, California and North Carolina. In a recent collaboration with architect and Program alum James Cornejo, the Helio Chronometer (solar clock), was created for a 100’ wall of PS 72 in East Harlem. Gutierrez also received two NYC Arts Commission Design Awards for public art: for the Julia de Burgos Center’s 2 story atrium sculpture and design for the Imagination Playground in Prospect Park. Gutierrez’ mixed media narrative work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Krakow Print Triennial, L’espace Dumas, Paris, Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico, the Museo Del Barrio, Wave Hill and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her video performance work can be seen online( http://www.markszine.com) . A Joan Mitchell and NYFA Fellow, her work appears in texts including “Puerto Rico,Arte & Memoria,” Baez & Martino, “Talking Visions, Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age” Shohat, “The Pink Swan” and “Mixed Blessings”, Lippard. She is a coauthor of “Art / Vision / Voice, Cultural Conversations in Community “(2005) - tracing the rich legacy of Peter Cooper’s project through contemporary transformations, with the voices of young urban artists redefining arts practice and cultural literacy.
Charles Fambro Saturday Program Curriculum Coordinator Charles Fambro, an alumni of Yale University, is an award winning sound composer, visual artist and writer, who joined the staff of the Saturday Outreach Program in 2002. His visual work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with over 30 works now housed in a special collection at the Waterloo Museum of Art. His compositions have been performed at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Outer Ear Festival of Sound and Socrates Sculpture Park. 3 CDs of his sound compositions are currently available from Delhf Records (http://www.delhfsound.com), “Sunset Rides” (2003), “Zep Tepi” (2005) and “Apartment House 2006” (2006). In 2002 he received a special commission from the World Wildlife Fund for “Alien Stingers,” a permanent 10-channel sound installation at the New York Aquarium. Articles and reviews of his music have appeared in The Wire and Musicworks.
Aisha Bell General Coordinator Bell is a multidisciplinary and performance artist living and working in New York City. Her visual art combines sculpture drawing and sound to create installations that allude to the tension between entrapment and choice. She has exhibited at Brooklyn Borough Hall, Rush Arts, Castle Gallery,Danny Simmons Corridor Gallery, The Brooklyn Public Library, The Lincoln Center Cork Gallery, Skylight gallery, Urbex Museum and The Afro-American Cultural Center in Charlotte, NC. As a performance artist she is part of “Second 2 Last”, an urban alternative spoken word group. Ms. Bell is a New York Foundation for the Arts 2005 fellow in Performance Art/ Multidisciplinary Work. She attended the Cooper Saturday Program as a high school student and received a BFA and a M.S. from Pratt institute and is currently pursuing a MFA at Hunter College.>/p>
Karma Mayet Johnson Writing Liaison Karma Mayet Johnson has taught Creative Writing to undergraduates at New York University, where she completed her MFA. Born in Chicago of Mississippian heritage, she teaches at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York. Her recent poetry has been published in Renaissance Noir, A Gathering of the Tribes, Nocturnes, and exit the apple.com. As an arts educator, she has coordinated programs for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co. and Children’ Studio School. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts, The Humanities Council of D.C., and The Field, Johnson has appeared as poet, performing artist, and percussionist at diverse venues including D.C.‘s Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Joyce Theater in New York, and Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival. Improvisation and Synaesthesia combine in her hybrid-genre performances, involving audiences in participatory ritual whose outcomes are unforeseen and whose elements include digital sound, organic matter, and collective memory.
Claudio Nolasco Photographer / Videographer As a child Claudio Nolasco moved from the Dominican Republic to New York City. In high school he attended classes in the Saturday Outreach Program. Two years in the Portfolio Preparation class confirmed his dedication to art and prepared him to successfully compete for admissions to Cooper Union. As an undergraduate he returned to teach in the Program and help design college preparatory seminars fo high school seniors. Winner of a Benjamin Menschel Fellowship for photography, Nolasco developed a body of documentary work revisioning connection with the rural island family left behind. Nolasco’s current photographic work documents a seven year transformation of the buildings and structures in his Brooklyn neighborhood, Williamsburg and the effects of gentrification on that community. Exhibiting locally, nationally and internationally, his work appears in “Landmarks of NY” book and exhibition: http://www.morganstanley.co.jp/aboutms/community/landmarksofnewyork/aboutexhibition_e.html. Nolasco has created the series of video documentaries for Saturday Program’s annual Living Document CD/DVD set.