Culture Bugs! Music + Movement + Art = Smart Fun!

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Culture Bugs!
Younger children come with an adult partner who participates fully in all aspects
of the program. As active advocates in the art adventure, parents or caregivers
sing, dance, glue , design and hop right alongside their kids. Enthusiastic adults
offer a clear model for future successes. No lesser talent than Frank Gehry
said of his grandmother who sat on the floor and built cities with him: “Here
was an adult saying you could be grown up and still play. That’s real creativity.”
Over the past eleven summers our myriad outings have left no artful
stone unturned! We’ve seen every major show in the area including: Joan Mitchell
at the Whitney, Mariko Mori’s POD, Alexander Calder at Storm King, the welded steel
show at the Neuberger Museum, Takashi Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum, the
Kusama retropsective at MOMA, Frank Gehry at the Guggenheim, DADA and the list
goes on and on. We’ve even ridden the rails to the DIA center in Beacon! Thoughtprovoking lessons and activities either precede or follow gallery visits encouraging
children to incorporate impressions and insights gained into their own artwork.
Wonderfully ambitious projects have been the program’s mainstay: from building our
own Gehryesque museums to wrapping landscapes of our own devising a la Christo.
All Arts, All Day Long:
Summer 2009
Mini-Camp
for Children
3-14
2009 Core Works:
Stravinsky’s Nightingale
Barber’s Knoxville, and
Mahler’s 4th Symphony
Culture Bugs took a magical wing in 2007 with Shakespeare’s mischievous A
Midsummer Night’s Dream. In true fairy spirit, we turned Midsummer on its head: with
the Earthworks artists as our guide, we built fairylands indoors and out, sprinkling the
earth with magical spells of our own devising. We made music, costumes, scenery!
Bound books, wrote poems! Sang, Danced! Big kids had the opportunity to work
on larger projects: theatrical scenes from Shakespeare, animations drawn from
the opera or the play, Shakespearean manga, and even filmmaking! As always,
children are swept up by the best gallery hops, the most wonderful, work with
imaginative HiArt! teachers, a steady stream of great music and endless inspiration
and encouragement. As the great Dada, Tristan Tzara, said, “Accept no forgeries!”
Hi Art! – New York’s premiere arts program – presents its eleventh
summer of Culture Bugs!, the city’s most brilliant and exhilarating
mini-camp in the contemporary arts. Like HiArt!, Culture Bugs! is
fully committed to a creative, child-centered methodology that encourages
children to express themselves freely, to develop a sense of ease, familiarity
and mastery in the “high” arts, and have a ton of fun all at the same time.
You may not think of lunch as art-driven, but believe it or not, it’s a big deal at
Culture Bugs! Like every activity we do, lunch is part of our adventure – whether at
Sarabeth’s, or the garden room at Bottino in Chelsea, or every kid’s favorite: Eat
on Eight right in our own building – lunch is about choice and freedom and the art
of eating. Plans are always evolving – that’s one of our greatest assets – we don’t
have to inscribe our plans in stone: we can tailor them to your kids as we go along.
Culture Bugs! integrates visits to the city’s most important museums and galleries with
focused in-studio sessions of music, dance and hands-on art. Children dig into a broad range
of artists’ materials as they sing, dance, improvise, read poetry, listen to late 20th and 21st
century music and stretch their active minds and bodies into new and exciting configurations.
Each child works according to his or her abilities, and appropriate faculty is available to
work with both older and younger participants. There is a 5:1 camper/ teacher ratio of
talented artists drawn from some of the best arts institutions and MFA programs in the
country: Columbia, SVA, Yale, Harvard and Hunter, to name just a few. The program
encourages children to take the lead in dictating the shape of projects, and the continued
emphasis on well-defined themes gives kids a sense of autonomy and creative freedom.
“As the summer HiArt! camp comes to a close,
I just wanted to thank you for an amazing
experience. Alexia is thriving under your
artistic tutelage... She is inspired,
stimulated and nurtured at
HiArt!... As a parent, it is a
dream come true... You are
so inspring.” -Grace Chao
New York’s
Premier
Summer Arts
Program
Culture Bugs! Is there such a thing as a typical day?
While we pride ourselves in our flexibility and artistic flow, we still have an identifiable
format for a typical day. Most often, you’ll find us beginning in the studio with our
core work – a musical masterpiece – dramatically, visually and kinesthetically
presented with materials developed by HiArt! founder and director, Cyndie BellenBerthézène. Children use the music as a source of inspiration, fleshing it out in their
own mixed-media artworks that continue to evolve throughout the summer. As they
immerse themselves in their art projects -- developing their personal artistic vision
and skills -- children become actively, rather than passively, involved with the core
work. Recent core works have included an extraordinary array of compositions:
from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony to Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
from Janecek’s The Cunning Little Vixen to Berlioz’s Le Spectre de la Rose.
The second part of the “typical” morning might be spent at museums or on gallery
hops, doing large-scale outdoor art activities, or completing studio art projects
related to an exhibition we’ve visited or will visit. Children under kindergarten age
come to Culture Bugs! with a caregiver three mornings each week -- Tuesday
through Thursday from 9:30am-12:00pm -- and Big Kids K+ can come for the full
day (on their own, of course) which includes Art in the Afternoon and lunch. Our
Tuesday – Thursday schedule is 100% kid-friendly, leaving much needed -- out of
camp -- downtime for overscheduled New York kids. For for the art-starved, however,
sporadic Marvelous Mondays and Fabulous Fridays will be scheduled as summer
nears, serving up an extra day of all art all the time for families in need.
Music +
Movement +
Art = Smart Fun!
Modern art museum classes brilliantly
integrated with joyful in-studio
explorations of music, movement
and hands-on art for growing minds.
HiArt!color.indd 1
After lunch it’s Art in the Afternoon: Studio
Art for Big Kids, an all hands-on art
program working with real artists’ materials and
ideas‚ a big kids’ haven for all modes of art and self-expression.
Since the program’s inception children have explored a
broad range of artmaking: from filmmaking to costume
design and bookmaking and manga. Incredibly
talented working artists guide the children in openended projects that allow for a mix of creative
expression and real technique. Past artists
have included: Sydney Chastain-Chapman –
Painting; Christine Frerichs – 2D, Sketching
and conceptual art; Hyeondo Park – MANGA
and Comics; Asya Reznikov – Sculpture; Heather
Sinclair – Animation + Puppetmaking, Martin Roth –
mixed media
and silkscreen, manga artist Yali Lin and sculptor, Nickolas Lascot, among others.
Culture Bugs! offers children the full day’s palette of activities -- including lunch. Space
permitting, though, there’s always the option to send your young artist over for just
Art in the Afternoons. No matter how big or small, there’s a place at Culture Bugs for
your child. Great friends, great adventures, an amazing, child-centered entré into the
land of high art for kids whose imaginations and intelligence want something more!
A very limited number of spaces are available and registration will be on a first-come, firstserved basis. Informal pre-camp open houses will give enrolled families the opportunity
to meet and arrange after-camp activities together. Culture Bugs! Summer 09 location
is still to be announced. As we go to print, we are conveniently located in Midtown
Manhattan, but you can bet that wherever we are, it will be wonderful and well worth it to
come and join us! So feel free to call with any questions you might have: 212-362-8190.
Culture Bugs! is the place to be for Summer 2009!
“Only in New York,” he was overheard whispering, as he and his wife made their
way through the Rothko show at the Whitney, “can you find a two-year old sitting and
drawing Rothko.” Unbeknownst to him, however, the “two-year old” was really a twenty
month old and she was not alone, but accompanied by a small group of three, four
and five year olds, all assiduously at work attempting to reproduce their favorite Rothko
paintings. Opera singer Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène, founder and director of HI ART! –
an unusual workshop, which offers young children an “introduction to high art aesthetics,” – smiles broadly. “People at the Whitney show were completely amazed by our
children. In one hour I was approached by four people, including two psychologists
and the friend of a well-known Latin American sculptor. They can’t believe their eyes.”
9/25/2008 3:15:45 PM
Culture Bugs!
Summer 2009
Mini-Camp Schedule
Session I: June 16-25
For Little Kids:
Little Kids: Culture Bugs! (Ages 2.5-5)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
9:30am-12:00pm
$775
For Big Kids Only:
Culture Bugs! +: Full Day Program for Big Kids (Ages 5+)
(Culture Bugs! + Lunch + Art in the Afternoons)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
9:30am-3:30pm
$1,550
Art in the Afternoon: Studio Art for Big Kids (Guest Artists TBA)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
1:30pm-3:30pm
$825–2wks
Session II: July 7-30
For Little Kids:
Little Kids: Culture Bugs! (Ages 2.5-5)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
9:30am-12:00pm
$1,525
For Big Kids:
Culture Bugs! +: Full Day Program for Big Kids! (Ages 5+)
(Culture Bugs! + Lunch + Art in the Afternoons)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
9:30am-3:30pm
$3,100
Art in the Afternoon: Studio Art for Big Kids (Guest Artists TBA)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
1:30pm-3:30pm
$1,650
Culture Bugs! Summer 2009 Mini-Camp
Enrollment Terms and Conditions
• An adult must accompany children under kindergarten age at all times.
• A $500 non-refundable enrollment deposit made payable to
HI ART! is due at the time of application for EACH session to
which you are applying your child. The balance of tuition
is due on May 1, 2009. Failure to make final payment by
the specified date will result in a forfeiture of your child’s
place in the program and no refunds will be made.
• All enrollments are for the full session. There will
be no refund for early withdrawals from the summer
program and absolutely no tuition refunds will be made
for withdrawals after May 1.
• Hi Art! reserves the right to either withdraw a child
or request that he/she be accompanied by an adult
if the program, at its discretion, deems this to be
warranted. There will be no refund in the event of
our request that a child be withdrawn for disciplinary
reasons.
• Families enrolling two or more children will be offered a 5%
reduction in tuition for the second child for full sessions
only.
• Registration is complete only upon the signed return of
the enrollment form, the completion of all paperwork and
full payment of tuition.
• Limited scholarship aid is available. Requests for application should be made to the director.
• The signator agrees and undertakes to insure that neither the child being enrolled nor any
adult accompanying the child during Hi Art! activities will in any way endanger, or threaten
to endanger, the safety or well being of any person in or associated with the program. If
in the sole judgment of HI ART! personnel, any such child or adult does so endanger or
threaten to endanger other persons, HI ART! reserves the right to discontinue the child’s
enrollment without consultation or other process, and without refund of any tuition or fee.
• Children and/or their work may be photographed during the course of
activities and these photographs may appear in HI ART! promotional materials. No child
whose photograph is used will be identified by
name, nor will any compensation be awarded for
use of said photographs.
• HiArt! Kids reserves the right to cancel
classes and assumes no liability whatsoever
beyond the refund of tuition for said classes.
As Seen In Big
Apple Parent:
Session III: August 4-13
For Little Kids:
Little Kids: Culture Bugs! (Ages 2.5-5)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
9:30am-12:00pm
$775
For Big Kids Only
Culture Bugs! +: Full Day Program for Big Kids! (Ages 5+)
(Culture Bugs! + Lunch + Art in the Afternoons)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
9:30am-3:30pm
$1,550
Art in the Afternoon: Studio Art for Big Kids
Tues,Wed,Thurs
1:30pm-3:30pm
$825
The Final Fling: August 24-28
For Little Kids:
Little Kids: Culture Bugs! (Ages 2.5-5)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
9:30am-12:00pm
$500
For Big Kids Only
Culture Bugs! +: Full Day Program for Big Kids! (Ages 5+)
(Culture Bugs! + Lunch + Art in the Afternoons)
Tues,Wed,Thurs
9:30am-3:30pm
$995
Fast becoming one of the most talked about
art programs in the city, Hi Art! continues
speeding savvy New York children towards
ever-greater heights of creativity... Fondly
regarded by its director as “an introduction
to high art aesthetics for young children,” the
very hands-on program alternates between studio and museum-time. One week, children
comb the city’s most prestigious museums and galleries; the next week music, dancing
and glue are their vehicles for an intensive introduction to a masterpiece of classical
music or opera. “My goal is to help children move away from the limitation of immediate
gratification and move toward sustained activity and interest,” says Bellen-Berthézène.
“We have great fun in class, yet there’s always a theoretical platform; real learning skills
are being honed and the classes are challenging without being overwhelming.” The
program’s philosophy and format gives children an opportunity to develop real
competence in the arts while gaining
confidence as people who listen, see,
understand and appreciate.
“At Hi Art!, kids don’t
‘stare’ at art or ‘learn’
about art or even
‘critique’ it. They climb
inside it... Cyndie’s
brilliant and the kids
adore her.” -E. Page
Best of New York 2000
New York Magazine
212-362-8190
hiartkids@earthlink.net
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9/25/2008 3:15:47 PM