“The Girl Who Knows” Loves P.S. ARTS!

May 14, 2013 by psarts

By Stephanie Watanabe, Blogger at The Girl Who Knows and P.S. ARTS Supporter

At P.S. ARTS, we are thrilled to share articles written by those who support our cause. Our friend Stephanie wrote this post after the Yale Whiffenpoofs Concert held at The Broad Stage back in April. We are excited to share her story and what arts education means to her! You can find this original post on Stephanie’s website.

Sooo . . . this past Sunday, I had the great pleasure of attending a charitable event in support of P.S. ARTS.

The legendary Yale Whiffenpoofs took the stage with guest Darren Criss and belted out some incredible songs, all in support of arts education in schools.

First of all, I wish I could say that attending this event was solely an act of charitable giving.

But alas my motives weren’t entirely pure. Like a few million other girls (and boys) out there, I wanted to get my eyes on Darren Criss up close.I’m such a fan of his from Glee. In case he’s not on your radar, Darren is one of the most interesting young performers coming up right now. His voice is other-worldly, he’s a damn fine actor and he’s a super likeable guy from the Bay Area.

Yes. I have a wee little crush on the boy.

Moving on.

The Yale Whiffenpoofs are the world’s oldest and best-known collegiate a cappella group. The group (also known as “The Whiffs”) were established in 1909 by a quartet of Yale seniors. Today, the group carries on. Each year, fourteen senior men are selected to participate in this celebrated Yale tradition. The roots of this elite group and their signature song can be traced back to the Yale Glee Club in the early 1900′s. To this day, The Whiffenpoof Song is sung at the end of every concert as a celebration of brotherhood and tradition. If you’re interested, you can find out more about the Whiffs here.

I highly recommend checking out one of their shows if you ever have the chance. It’s good ‘ol fashioned fun.All the tradition and formalities aside, these boys can sing. I mean REALLY sing. I’ve heard a cappella group’s before, but this was over the top. They had such strength and power and vocal control. It was so impressive. Hats off to the Whiffs!

And Darren Criss was . . . awesome.

That’s really all I can say without acting like a giddy 14-year old.

All of this great talent was put on display in support of an organization that has been serving Southern California schools for more than two decades. Their mission? To improve the lives of children by providing arts education to underserved public schools and communities.

My life was profoundly affected by the theater department in my junior high and high school back in St. Louis. I honestly can’t imagine my life without the arts.

In music, drama and art classes, I found myself. I found a language that I could speak. A tribe that I could call my own. A way to express myself and develop a sense of value and purpose. Art changes lives.The mission of P.S. ARTS is one that’s close to my heart. I’m really looking forward to continuing to support and be involved in their good work. Be sure to watch the video below and visit the P.S. ARTS site to learn more about how you can help support the arts in schools!

Thank you for writing this piece, Stephanie! We asked “The Girl Who Knows” a few questions about why arts education is so meaningful to her.

1. How has arts education been important to you in your life and why?

Growing up, I was always the kid who felt like she never fit in. I was in the midwest and from a multi-racial family, which in the 80′s and 90′s wasn’t all that cool. I was teased and made fun of a lot. Art and the theater were my outlets.

I remember being in art class when I was in elementary school. I loved that I could be anyone I wanted. I could create what I felt was beautiful. There was no wrong or right. It was something that I did, and made, with my own two hands. And it felt good. Then, when I got to junior high school, I was bitten by the drama bug and become a full-on theater girl until I graduated high-school. I loved the freedom to play different characters and explore their inner worlds. The rush of being on stage combined with the amazing sense of peace I felt while rehearsing and the tribe of fellow thespians I was a part of – it’s something I’ll never forget and has absolutely shaped who I am today. Those were the single most memorable and happy memories from my youth, for sure. And quite frankly, I don’t know where I would be today if it weren’t for arts education in my life.

2. How did you first hear of/or come to know about P.S. ARTS?

I first heard of P.S. ARTS when I was browsing around the internet. Given the nature of the web, I honestly don’t remember how I stumbled upon your site, but I remember looking at all the great work you were doing and thinking it would be great to support your work one day. The fact that you got mega-talent Darren Criss to your latest event didn’t hurt either.

You can follow Stephanie’s blog for more great articles and inspiration at www.thegirlwhoknows.com.

Behind the Scenes of Our LA Modernism Opening Night Fundraiser

May 9, 2013 by psarts

By Chelsea Martell, Advancement & Operations Assistant

“The children of today will be the artists of tomorrow.
Support P.S. ARTS and help give art to EVERY child.”

Stephanie Kistner, our Education & Programs Associate, painted this quote alongside the P.S. ARTS information and merchandise booth at the LA Modernism Show to help drive home our organization’s mission and encourage those attending the event to help us in our goal to provide art to every child in our community.

The Los Angeles Modernism Show

The LA Modernism Show held at the Barker Hangar on the weekend of April 25-28 featured over 50 exhibitors of 20^th century furniture, decorative, and fine arts. The proceeds from ticket sales of the 700 attendees at the Opening Night Party on April 25th and the LA Modernism Show catalog benefited P.S. ARTS’ in-school programs.

Connection to P.S. ARTS

P.S. ARTS transitioned from hosting the LA Antiques Show to the LA Modernism Show two years ago and it has been a great success thus far. Modernism is a great way to celebrate modern art and to connect P.S. ARTS with those who are part of LA’s thriving art and design community. Also, you never know which one of our students will be featured someday at a show like Modernism

Behind the Scenes

Crafting, producing, and executing an event like the LA Modernism Opening Night Party is no easy feat. Like any other successful event, it wouldn’t have been made possible without the help, assistance, and support of our staff, committee, and volunteers.

And Modernism 2013 was a year of changes.

This year, instead of just having an information booth for attendees to learn more about our organization and programs, we decided to sell merchandise as well. A huge shout out to P.S. ARTS Board of Trustee Sharon Blair, who helped us curate the booth with amazing books, household items, and other attention-grabbing pieces. Here’s a picture of the merchandise all ready to be taken to the Barker Hangar:

We also so appreciate Event Committee members Adam and Connie Derry of ADBD, who designed our P.S. ARTS Modernism swag (still for sale now – call our office at 310.586.1017 for more info!).

Here’s a sneak peek behind the scenes of the before and after setting up our festive and fun booth.

We also kept the booth open the entire duration of the show and all of us who worked a shift definitely had some magic moments to share about spreading our mission to interested attendees.

Along with the new merchandise booth we held a silent auction. Check out some of the cool items we had below. Congrats (and thank you) to all of the winners!

Then there was check-in: it was my first Modernism at P.S. ARTS and I was a little nervous because I didn’t know what to expect but I had an amazing team of volunteers and check-in gurus, including fellow P.S. ARTS staff members Megan Strawther & Stephanie Kistner, who had been there last year to help lead the way!

As you can see, it’s all hands on deck when it comes to creating and setting up an event of this magnitude.

But more on the event itself :)

It was a classy affair sponsored by Chloe, HL Group, Lynda & Stewart Resnick, Pam & Alan Bergman, The Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, Jena & Michael King, Ma(i)sonary Napa Valley, One Kings Lane, Lisa Kudrow & Michel Stern and Ultimat Vodka. Here’s a picture from the show entrance featuring our incredible sponsors!

Guests with Collectors’ Preview tickets were welcomed in for an exclusive VIP hour at 6PM followed by the Cocktail Party which began at 7PM. Guests were served the finest treats from Serves You Right! Catering and enjoyed desserts from Gotta Have Smore’s & Sprinkles.

Besides admiring all of the incredible art exhibits at the Modernism Show, guests were treated to Ultimat Vodka’s muddling bar, imaginative drinks themed for the night, and hilarious photobooth pictures.

Thank you to all those who purchased catalog pages, supported us through ticket purchases, and stopped by our information and merchandise booth at any point during the run of the show. Finally, a huge thank you to all our sponsors, donors, committee members, and volunteers that made this event a fun and successful night! Because of our volunteer’s efforts and donor support, we were able to raise vital funds to support our mission of improving the lives of children by providing arts education to underserved public schools and communities.

Our staff thinks you’re all awesome and thanks you for your support!

My Magic Moment at McBride Special Education Center

April 30, 2013 by psarts

By Amy Knutson, Education & Programs Assistant

This year, four special education centers in LAUSD began the process of integrating students with special educational needs with neighboring general education elementary schools. Last fall, P.S. ARTS was approached by LAUSD to assist in the integration process of two schools, Grand View Boulevard Elementary, where P.S. ARTS has been providing music and visual arts since 1994, and McBride Special Education Day Center, which is adjacent to Grand View’s campus. This kicked off a flurry of research, professional development, and logistical coordination that ultimately resulted in the spring launch of P.S. ARTS’ first inclusive music and visual arts program. The funding for this program is provided in generous part by the Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation, whose mission is to promote healthy communities by supporting education, health, and cultural programs. Our goal for the inclusion arts classes is to break down boundaries between general education students and students with varying levels of physical and mental disabilities.

As I walked into McBride Special Education Center one Thursday morning to visit the first P.S. ARTS integrated music class, I was struck by the potential impact this project could have, not only at a district level, but more importantly, at the student level. These integrated classes allow students who have never had the experience of working together a safe place to create art and develop life-long skills together.

In the music class, Richard Scher, our Instruction and Curriculum Specialist and Master Teaching Artist, led a group of students through a class based on the Orff-Schulwerk model, which is designed to reach and include ALL students and ALL ability levels. As Richard pulled out a slide whistle, many of the Grand View students began giggling, already knowing what sound would emit from the instrument. I closely watched one McBride student who had never seen a slide whistle before and who, up to this point in class, had made no reactions. As soon as this student heard the cartoon-like sound that the slide whistle emitted, there was a visible reaction; just a slight laugh and a slight raising of the head as she looked at Richard and the instrument, and tracked him with her eyes. I didn’t think too much of it until her aid came up to me after the class and told me that this student, in all her years of working with her, had never shown a reaction like that before. As she left, the aid told me that she couldn’t wait to return with her student to P.S. ARTS’ integrated classes to find more ways to engage her students through music and art. She then walked away with a spring in her step.

It’s moments like these, after prepping for weeks and months on end, through countless e-mails and phone calls, and undergoing hours of training, that make a magic moment; knowing that a student, through art, has been positively affected. And in this case, not just the student, but those around her as well. If our classes can provide hope by allowing ALL children to experience the joy that art offers – regardless of ability, language, or economic barriers – then we’re doing something right.

The Artistic Process

April 23, 2013 by psarts

By Kathy Taslitz, P.S. ARTS Board Member and Artist

Kathy Taslitz is an artist that specializes in sculptures and is on the P.S. ARTS Board of Trustees. Kathy generously wrote this post to share with us her artistic process, her current work, and why she feels arts education is so important for our children. P.S. ARTS thanks Kathy for both her board service and for contributing to our blog.

As an artist, the most important part of my process is the idea. Everything is generated from that one moment. I get a vision of what I want a piece to be, what I want it to look like, and what I want it to express.

From there, I put the idea down on paper by making a rough sketch. Sometimes these sketches happen on a napkin, an envelope, or a post-it… you never know when inspiration may strike, so as long as I get the idea jotted down. I then draw a more refined sketch to work from. Because of the mediums I tend to use, my work is quite layered and technically complex. I have to determine a process to fabricate the pieces; this is all part of the journey. Through each step of the process, the piece evolves and becomes more interesting. I tend to think of this work as human and as someone I am learning to know and understand.

My latest sculpture series Just Visiting examines the symbiosis between the natural world and humanity, and asking the existential questions about how the two coexist. They are large sculptures of fiberglass seashells with elaborate technical components where each work represents one of the five senses. They are mixed media works combining original audio tracks as well as projected imagery in the interior of the shells. The shells are meant to be sentient naturalists telling their story of nature and humanity, reminding the viewer of the universal cycle of existence. It is a dialogue between the technological and the organic.

While growing up, I was fortunate to have a mother who was an artist and provided a creative environment to “color” and play as well as a public school that I attended offering art class every week. It was exciting each week to work on our art projects, as it was a completely different outlet and was such fun. Every kindergartner could experience that feeling of cold, wet finger paint sliding through their fingers and across the page. It was freeing. Additionally, learning about art, the artists, and their history opened the idea that people could actually have a career doing this stuff. Pretty cool!

It was the thrill of that exposure that led me to seek out my involvement with P.S. ARTS. I had the opportunity to visit one of our partner schools and see firsthand the work that was being done in our organization’s programs. I spent the morning in an art classroom with a group of 30 first graders and in their faces I saw looks of joy and pride, some in deep concentration, as well as the thrill of pure fun. These children could express themselves in a personal way that wasn’t about being right or wrong. They could imagine and create, and hopefully someday they feel inspired by their own idea that sets them on their path towards creating their own unique work of art.

Learn more about Kathy on her website at kathytaslitz.com. If you want to see more great works of art, we encourage you to attend the LA Modernism Opening Night this Thursday, April 25th. Not only will you feel inspired by the incredible art on display, but you will be helping us raise money for the arts education programs we provide in our community’s most underserved schools. Thank you for your support!

Arts Advocacy Day 2013

April 16, 2013 by psarts

By Stephanie Kistner, Education & Programs Associate

Last week, hundreds of arts supporters from across the nation made their way to Washington D.C. to meet with their Congressional representatives in order express their support for the arts. The 26^th annual Arts Advocacy Day, organized by Americans for the Arts, is a place where artists, art organizations, and arts advocates came together to make a case for the federal support of the arts. A long time arts supporter and advocate, I was excited to attend this year for the first time!

I was eager and ready to advocate, but since it was my first Arts Advocacy Day I didn’t really know what to expect. Would I encounter picketers with handmade signs “Support the Arts!”? How many people would be there? Would I actually get to meet with representatives? Would anyone be interested in what I had to say?

I didn’t see any handmade signs while on Capitol Hill, but I did witness hundres of arts advocates racing from one meeting to the next, trying to reach as many representatives as possible in a short period of time. Everyone we met with during these meetings was genuinely interested in hearing what we had to say. They listened to me speak about why I thought the arts and education were so important and how critical it is for students to have access to an arts education. Thoughtful questions were asked and I was prepared with numbers and statistics to back up my case.

Did you know that the arts help close the achievement gap and prepare students with crucial 21^st Century Skills such as critical and innovative thinking abilities? And did you know that students who have access to the arts are more likely to graduate high school, attend college and pursue gainful employment? It’s also been shown that a school rich in the arts is able to retain high quality teachers for longer periods of time; a healthy school community that includes the arts creates a learning environment where teachers want to teach, and students want to learn.

Arts education is a passion of mine, but it wasn’t the only issue on the table at Arts Advocacy Day. In order to highlight the most important issues regarding the arts, Americans for the Arts put together a very useful Summary of Legislative Requests to refer to while we were on the hill. There were three major asks that we presented to each person we met with:

We urged for the support of a budget of $155 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In 2012 the NEA awarded more than 2,200 grants to organizations, schools and artists that supported the arts in almost 5,000 communities. To put this budget into perspective, current funding amounts to just 47 cents per capita, as compared to 70 cents per capita in 1992.

We also asked Congress to appropriate $30 million for the Arts in Education program in the FY 2014 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill and to retain the Arts in Education program as a distinct grant competition in FY 2014 appropriations. We requested that Members of Congress retain the arts in the definition of core academic subjects and strengthen equitable access to arts learning by requiring states to report annually on student access to, and participation in, all core academic subjects, including the arts.

And lastly, we encouraged Congress to preserve incentives for charitable giving by protecting the charitable tax deduction from rate caps or other new limitations. There are approximately 1.4 million nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations that contribute $1.1 trillion in human services every year, supporting 13.5 million jobs. In recognition of their benefit to the public good, contributions made to 501(c)(3) nonprofits have been tax-deductible since 1917.

Michelle Weger (Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra), Stephanie Kistner (PS ARTS), Jennie Ford (Actors Equity), Victor Castillo, Lucille Royabal-Allard’s (D-CA dist 40) Legislative Director, Danielle Brazell (Arts for LA) and Michael Bulger (Columbia MA candidate in arts management).

Arts Advocacy Day may only come around once a year, but you can advocate for the arts all year round by sending your representatives a quick letter stating why you support the arts. Visit the Americans for the Arts Action Center to find out who your representatives are and send them an email directly from the site, it can’t get any easier than that! To find out more about current issues in the arts and to help make your case the 2013 Congressional Arts Handbook is full of useful facts and figures.

Arts Advocacy Day annually brings together hundreds of arts advocates who care deeply about the state of the arts in America. Together, we created a unified voice that made the case for why the federal government should support, and continue to support the arts. I left Arts Advocacy Day 2013 inspired by the political process, by other arts advocates and by the power that a unified voice can have.

Support the arts today!

A Whiffenpoof Shares His Arts Education Story

April 3, 2013 by psarts

By Brandon Levin, Member of the Yale Whiffenpoofs

As a member of the Yale Whiffenpoofs, an a cappella group that has supported P.S. ARTS over the years by singing benefit concerts with featured celebrity guests to help raise money for the organization, I hold education and the arts particularly near and dear to my heart. As a Los Angeles native who attended Harvard-Westlake High School and is now a senior at Yale University, I grew up playing the piano and singing in a variety of environments, in and out of school alike. However, some of my most formative experiences with the arts were in school, where a mutually supportive atmosphere of musically inclined teachers and fellow students was essential to my development as a performer. Singing in choir in high school as well as participating in numerous musical theater productions beginning in 9^th grade cemented in me a desire to continue singing in college, a path which led me to ultimately audition for the Yale Whiffenpoofs, the world’s oldest and most well-known collegiate a cappella group.

The Whiffenpoofs have the good fortune of singing for audiences all across the country and the world, benefiting a variety of causes. Carrying forward our beloved, century-old tradition, each year we perform over two hundred concerts in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Broadway’s Lincoln Center, and the Rose Bowl, as well as at private parties, country clubs, corporate events, restaurants, and hotels. Last year, the Whiffenpoofs sang for President Obama at the White House and toured to over thirty countries over all seven continents. We have been featured on television shows such as The Sing Off, The West Wing, The Today Show, 60 Minutes, Gilmore Girls, Jeopardy!, and Saturday Night Live. The New York Times did a piece on us last month, as did the American magazine GQ.

As musicians, many of whom were inspired to sing in high school and college, none of this would have been possible had we grown up without supportive arts education environments. We thus see P.S. ARTS and the mission it espouses as a central part of providing what truly is an essential part of early education for children.

This year, the “Whiffs” will be singing a concert on April 14th at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica with “Glee” star Darren Criss. I hope you’ll join us in raising money for this truly wonderful cause by attending a concert that aims to celebrate all that is wonderful about the arts, which will in turn enable students to enjoy the wonderful musical opportunities many of us Whiffs had in school and growing up!

Darren Criss will perform with The Whiffenpoofs on behalf of P.S. ARTS on April 14th!