Proteus Gowanus is hosting two new Zone A Workshop series taught by two experienced artists and teachers. In honor of our yearlong theme, both workshops focus on painting and drawing WATER. Read on for more information…

Workshop 1: Drawing the Gowanus
A workshop for parents and children (8 – 16 years old)
Instructor: Lado Pochkhua

Saturdays 10 am – 12 pm
Four Sessions: March 1, 8, 15, 22
(Participants can attend one or more workshops)

Price per workshop: Parent and child: $75, Individual (child or adult) $40
Price for four sessions: Parent and child: $250, Individual child or adult: $160
Register: email hidden; JavaScript is required

An introduction to drawing techniques, including charcoal, graphite,  pen and ink and collage. Participants will explore the post-industrial landscape and artifacts of the Gowanus Canal. The workshop will include a stroll along the Gowanus and a tour of the Hall of the Gowanus, a mini-museum of the canal at Proteus Gowanus.

Lado Pochkhua was born in Sukhumi, Georgia. An accomplished, classically trained artist, Pochkhua graduated from the Sukhumi College of Art in 1994 and the Tbilisi Academy of Art in 2001. He has exhibited internationally in Georgia, Russia, Hungary and the United States. In 2013, he had a solo exhibit at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia.  http://ladopochkhua.tumblr.com/, www.bkbxgallery.com

Workshop 2: Watercolor Techniques for Painting Water
A workshop for adults (16 years or older)
Instructor: Elizabeth O’Reilly

Sundays, 10 am – 12 pm
Four Sessions: March 2, 9, 16, 23

Price for Four Sessions: $160
Register: email hidden; JavaScript is required

Elizabeth O’Reilly will teach basic watercolor techniques with a focus on rendering the shimmering movement of water. Water as a subject lends itself beautifully to the watercolor medium, but capturing its fluidity with this medium is a challenge. This class focuses on combining wet-on-wet and dry techniques with transparent colors to convey the illusion of water. Looking at images of water created by various artists will help us to use and incorporate a variety of techniques and tools to master this subject.

Elizabeth O’Reilly received her MFA from Brooklyn College, New York, and her B.Ed from the National University of Ireland. She has participated in residencies at the Ballinglen Foundation, Ireland, the Ucross Foundation, Wyoming, the Ragdale Foundation, Illinois, and has received numerous awards, including a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant.   A documentary on her work, Ealaiontóir Thar Sáile (An Artist Abroad) was shown on network TV in Ireland. O’Reilly shows at George Billis Gallery in Chelsea, New York, and internationally. She has taught at The New School for Social Research, Pratt Institute, and Brooklyn College as well as private workshops out of her studio in Brooklyn.  Her work is included in Painted Landscapes: Contemporary Views by Lauren Della Monica.  www.elizabethoreilly.com

These programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Proteus has three CD players with the recording in them so three visitors can go on the walk together. A lovely activity for an autumn day.

Please join us for an evening of broom-making with a Master Broomsquire from the foothills of the Catskills.  David of Catskill Mountain Broomworks, will create two very special brooms fashioned from a locally raised crop of broomcorn grown this summer on the banks of the Gowanus Canal.

The Gowanus brooms are the culmination of the project “SWEEP” by the collaborative Husk with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy and with support from the Brooklyn Arts Council and FEAST Brooklyn.

This May, Husk planted broomcorn seed along a terraced garden just above the high tide zone of the Gowanus. Broomcorn is a type of Sorghum that was once commonly used to make brooms. Brooklyn was once home to a small broom-making industry but with the introduction of synthetic materials broomcorn cultivation declined and the broom-making industry left Brooklyn. The Gowanus Canal is currently a US Superfund Clean Up site and the garden was only steps away from a caution sign marking a combined sewage output. The Gowanus brooms are meant to draw attention to efforts being made to clean and restore the area around the canal. This evening, Husk celebrates the rare heritage craft of broom-making and invites you to watch the transformation of the Gowanus broomcorn into the Gowanus Brooms.

Come enjoy music, photographs of the garden, and beer donated by Six Point Brewery.

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Husk is a collaborative project of Christina Kelly and Jeffrey Hutchison.

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy is a steward for the preservation, restoration and green development of the Gowanus Canal

Art in Odd Places, in partnership with the Institute for Urban Design and Proteus Gowanus, is pleased to present Rise and Fall: Contemporary Nautical Practice and the Gowanus Canal on the occasion of the first annual Urban Design Week festival (September 15 – 20, 2011).

This panel discussion will center on artists and activists who take the NYC waterways as their creative point of departure, and who have crafted alternative ways to reclaim the water as viable public space. Of particular interest in this dialog is EPA Superfund site, the Gowanus Canal. Some ideas that may be explored in the conversation include: creating alternative economies, re-imagining transportation, sustainability and the waterfront, and the thought of greater autonomy and accessibility for the urban individual. While Urban Design Week is a festival that is looking for creative, yet nonetheless practical solutions to real concerns regarding livability in NYC, this panel seeks to balance the design conversation with artistic projects that allow for a further-reaching imagination into a future of agency.

Panelists: Ludger K. Balan, Dylan Gauthier, Constance Hockaday, Mary Mattingly and Tim Thyzel

Moderator: Jeff Stark

Organized by Juliana Driever 

Panelists

Ludger K. Balan is an Artist, Filmmaker, Scuba Diver, a Naturalist and Licensed Falconer. He is the founder of The Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy, a not-for-profit environmental and cultural organization that serves communities throughout New York Harbor in quality and innovative public engagement programs in environmental literacy, conservation support, youth development, cultural enrichment and maritime activities. Mr. Balan spearheads the organization as its Executive Environmental and Cultural Program Director, and is the designer of the organizations EnviroMedia Mobile – a state-of-the-art mobile nature and maritime museum on wheels. The mobile museum serves the public with a robust Children and Families program series at IKEA Erie Basin Park, in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Dylan Gauthier is a Brooklyn-based artist (which sometimes also means writer, curator, educator, boatbuilder, media activist). His works are videos, photographs, soundtracks, and performances and are concerned with temporary situations, shared experiences, public space and access to information. He is co-founder of the boatbuilding and printmaking project Mare Liberum (thefreeseas.org), a frequent collaborator with the Gowanus Studio Space, and with the collective Red76, and has shown in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally. Dylan is a candidate in the MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College.

Constance Hockaday belongs to a family of boat builders called the Floating Neutrinos. Headed by modern nomad Poppa Neutrino, they have built more than twelve rafts, largely from salvaged and recycled materials – some of which have crossed the Atlantic Ocean. She builds boats, books, and public lectures. Her most recent project is the Boggsville Boatel and Boat-in Theatre— a hotel and movie theatre made from salvaged boats and wood. Hockaday also has a second job working in the field of conflict resolution and alternative dispute resolution.

Mary Mattingly has participated in exhibitions at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the International Center of Photography, Palais de Tokyo, and the Neuberger Museum of Art. She has had solo exhibitions at Occurrence Espace d’art et d’essai Contemporains in Montreal, Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY and Galerie Adler in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2011, she participated in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation (NYC), Art Omi (ME), and is currently a Fellow at Eyebeam (NYC). Her work has been featured in ArtForum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, Le Monde Magazine, ICON, Sculpture Magazine, Aperture, BBC News, and MSNBC.

Tim Thyzel was born in Hamburg , Germany in 1966. He is currently living and working in New York City. Thyzel received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991 and a Diploma (MFA) from the Hochschule für Bildende Künster in Hamburg in 1995. His work has been shown in galleries and museums in the US, Europe and Australia. Thyzel frequently incorporates sculpture and performance in the public realm. Recently he created boats from bubble wrap and brown packing tape, which he successfully launched on the East River and Meadow Lake.

Jeff Stark (Moderator) is the editor of Nonsense NYC, a weekly email list and discriminating resource for independent art, weird events, strange happenings, unique parties, and senseless culture in New York City. He was a member of the Miss Rockaway Armada, a collective art project that floated a junk raft down the Mississippi River in 2006, and built rafts for Swoon’s Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea in 2008. He lives a block and a half from the Gowanus Canal.