North Brooklyn-based  Round Robin Collective will fill Arts@Renaissance space with following activities this weekend.

Saturday February 25th at 2pm & 3pm: Free beginner Chi Kung classes
*Gentle *Incredibly beneficial *Aligning breath, movement and awareness

Sunday Feb 26, 12- 4pm: A-Maize-ing Grain
*Corn Grinding *Corn Cakes *Corn History *Interactive Farm Drawing

A-Maize-ing Grain poster

Suko Presseau, farm-educator for MacEnroe Farms in upstate NY, along with Caroline Burghardt present a family friendly food and crafts day that will explore Maize (corn) through a variety of hands-on activities. There will be information on the history of the cultivation and use of corn; activities of grinding cornmeal through traditional and contemporary techniques; cooking and eating corn cakes; an interactive cornfield landscape drawing with scarecrow which will be used as a photographic backdrop and as an education tool to discuss farming; and a coloring area with corn-themed pages. Children welcome with parental supervision as well adults who like corn and farms!

Saturday February 25th at 2pm & 3pm: Free beginner Chi Kung classes
*Gentle *Incredibly beneficial *Aligning breath, movement and awareness

Chi Kung is beneficial to physical and emotional well being – it is a practice of aligning breath, movement, and awareness. People of all ages can participate as the movements are very gentle and simple. Participants should wear comfortable clothing and flat shoes.

The Chi Kung classes will be filmed and the footage will be edited into a short video – best described as a video patchwork quilt – as part of the Hospitality group art show at arts@renaissance.

To RSVP email Chris at arts@stnicksalliance.org.

St. Nicks Alliance
at Greenpoint Renaissance Center
2 Kingsland Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11211

North Brooklyn-based  Round Robin Collective will fill Arts@Renaissance space with following activities this weekend.

Sat. Feb 18, 1p- 5p: Community Sewing Day
*Learn to sew *Donate fabric *Contribute to installation

Join Round Robin Collective member Amanda Browder for a collective sewing day to make a large scale fabric installation in the Art@Renaissance space. Donate / Trim / Sew / Install – all of these processes will be different acts of sculptural collaboration in the making of a fantastic new piece. Learn how to sew, donate your extra fabric, or chat with your neighbors. Bring yourself, bring your fabric, and contribute to a community-driven collaboration.

Sun. Feb 19, 12p- 4p: A Blizzard Built, interactive installation
*Collaborative *Interactive *Installation

Snowflakes, snowflakes and even more snowflakes!

Saturday February 18th at 1pm, 2pm, & 3pm: Free beginner Chi Kung classes
*Gentle *Incredibly beneficial *Aligning breath, movement and awareness

Chi Kung is beneficial to physical and emotional well being – it is a practice of aligning breath, movement, and awareness. People of all ages can participate as the movements are very gentle and simple. Participants should wear comfortable clothing and flat shoes.

The Chi Kung classes will be filmed and the footage will be edited into a short video – best described as a video patchwork quilt – as part of the Hospitality group art show at arts@renaissance.

To RSVP email Chris at arts@stnicksalliance.org.

St. Nicks Alliance
at Greenpoint Renaissance Center
2 Kingsland Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11211

Join Round Robin Collective member Amanda Browder on Saturday, February 18th from 1-5pm for a collective sewing day to make a large scale fabric installation in the Art@Renaissance space. Donate / Trim / Sew / Install – all of these processes will be different acts of sculptural collaboration in the making of a fantastic new piece. Learn how to sew, donate your extra fabric, or chat with your neighbors. Bring yourself, bring your fabric, and contribute to a community-driven collaboration.

DONATE
Contribute your unused fabric to help make the piece! We are making a fabric vortex and we need a lot of materials! We are looking for cotton, sheets, pants, and non-stretchy fabric in all colors and/or patterns. Donations of sewing tools such as needles, thread, and scissors would be greatly appreciated too. Recycle your fabrics into a spectacular piece of collaborative art!

A public fabric donation box will be available at St. Nicks Alliance Lobby to donate fabric at anytime.

For questions or to arrange donations, contact amandabrowder@gmail.com or ailsa.cavers@gmail.com or pop in and drop off donations to any Round Robin event planned on the calendar : http://roundrobinbrooklyn.blogspot.com/p/hospitality.html

TRIM
If sewing is not your interest, help cut the sections of fabric to make this large scale art work!

SEW
Help sew with easy straight stitches on a sewing machine – All levels of experience are welcome and tutoring is available! Together we will to physically bind the donated fabrics into an awesome shape!

CONVERSE – Help cheer on people working, make new friends and meet other community members, learn and collaborate. It will be a fun day of volunteerism and art-making!  Bring your craft-loving family members and friends! All groups are welcome:  kids, families and elderly friends!

Now through March 10, North Brooklyn-based arts collective will fill Arts@Renaissance with installations, open drawing studios, film screenings, and community events as part of their “Hospitality” project.

Swing by and check out any of the following:

Tues. Jan 31, Feb 7, Feb 13, Feb 21, Feb 28, 7p-9p: Open Drawing Studios
Tues. Feb 7, 21, 28, 6p- 7p: Reading Group: On the Social Contract
Sun. Feb 12, 7p- 10p: Heart-breakers and Lonely-Hearts Party
Thurs. Feb 16, 7p- 10p: Film screening, Title TBA
Sat. Feb 18, 12p- 5p: Community Sewing Day
Sat. Feb 18, 1pm, 2pm and 3pm: Chi Kung classes
Sun. Feb 19, 12p- 4p: A Blizzard Built, interactive installation
Wed. Feb 22: Complications Supper Club
Sat. Feb 25, 2pm & 3pm: Chi Kung classes
Sun. Feb 26, 12p- 4p: A-Maize-ing Grain, family friendly food and crafts day
Thurs. Mar 1, 7p: 30-30 Vision, film screening
Sun. Mar 4, 5p- 10p: Winter BBQ
Thurs. Mar 8, 7p: Your Day Is My Night, performance
Sat. Mar 10, 7p: Journey Into Darkness, film screening

Full details after the jump.

Hospitality Calendar of Events

Tuesday Night Open Drawing Studio
Tuesdays January 31, February 7, February 13, February 21, and February 28
7-9pm

Join Round Robin Collective members for a loosely structured studio drawing workshop where participants can come in and draw, discuss their work, hang out and learn about RRC and Arts@Renaissance. Some
drawing material will be provided but participants are encouraged to bring their own.

Reading Group : “On the Social Contract” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Tuesdays February 7, February 21, and February 28
6-7pm

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” – these are the famous opening words of the treatise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that helping inspire the writing of our Constitution. Rejecting the view thatanyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or ‘social contract’, that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. During these three meetings, we will read sections and discuss “On the Social Contract,” by Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. Collective reading allows for the ability to enter into difficult texts that might not be as easily accessible on an individual reader’s level. An online PDF will be available for downloading.

Heart-Breakers and Lonely-Hearts Party
Sunday February 12
7-10pm

We invite you to come break our heart, a piñata heart that is, and share music about love lost, love gained, love revenged, and everything in between. We will make a big beautiful piñata heart filled with sweet candies that we invite you to come bash to your hearts delight! We will also have record players and a hook
up for your iPod and we invite you to share your favorite songs about love, life, or space travel, anything goes as long as it’s good! BYOB to drown your sorrows or rejoice with.

Title TBA
Thursday February 16
7-10 pm

Caroline Burghardt and Amanda Tiller present a mash-up collage musical movie, the narrative of which is drawn from classic Disney romances. The original songs will be replaced with well-known songs taken from other live-action musical movies. This video performance is a revision of our childhood notions of love seen through our jaded adult eyes. Audience members are encouraged to join in and sing along. BYOB encouraged, popcorn provided.

Community Sewing Day
Saturday February 18
12-5pm

Join Round Robin Collective member Amanda Browder on Saturday, February 4th for a collective sewing day to make a large scale fabric installation in the Art@Renaissance space. Donate / Trim / Sew / Install – all of these processes will be different acts of sculptural collaboration in the making of a fantastic new piece.
Learn how to sew, donate your extra fabric, or chat with your neighbors. This project looks to take hospitality to a sculptural level. Bring yourself, bring your fabric, and contribute to a hospitality-driven collaboration. Donate – Fabric (non-stretchy, cotton, colorful, large sections if possible) Learn – the basics of sewing or….Lend you and your machine to the project. Contribute – yourself!

A Blizzard Built
Sunday February 19
(installation will be up Feb 4 – March 11)
12 – 4 pm

Bring on the storm, bring on the snow! We are building a blizzard! Caroline Burghardt along with Shannon Finnegan, Lisa Leighton, Deirdre McConnell, Breanne Trammell, and James Weingrod will build a
collaborative interactive installation of not-just-paper snowflakes. Flakes will start to form as soon as the exhibition starts but the storm will really get going on our installation workshop day, Sunday, February 19. We invite visitors to bring flakes from home or make some while you are visiting the exhibition. The flakes can be any color (preferably white, blue, grey, pastels but Cheeto orange is great too!), any kind of paper (regular, metallic, clear, tissue, etc.), or any material you fancy (paper, wire, fabric, yarn, etc.). By the end of the exhibition we will have the wildest, most colorful storm this winter!

Complications Supper Club
Wednesday February 22
RSVP for seating times and donation

Heal your bad memories of hospital cuisine with a home-cooked and home-brewed artisanal meal (with an institutional theme!) by Jen Galatioto, Jonathan Pywell, and Mark Christopher Straiton. Information will be available about local CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture groups) and home beer-making techniques.

A-Maize-ing Grain
Sunday February 26
12-4 pm

Suko Presseau, farm-educator for MacEnroe Farms in upstate NY, along with Caroline Burghardt present a family friendly food and crafts day that will explore Maize (corn) through a variety of hands-on activities. There will be information on the history of the cultivation and use of corn; activities of grinding cornmeal
through traditional and contemporary techniques; cooking and eating corn cakes; an interactive cornfield landscape drawing with scarecrow which will be used as a photographic backdrop and as an education tool to discuss farming; and a coloring area with corn-themed pages. Children welcome with parental supervision as well adults who like corn and farms!

30-30 Vision
Thursday March 1
7 pm

A program of experimental films and videos exploring medicine’s charged relationship to the body. Showing work by both mature and emerging filmmakers, the works delve into fantasies surrounding photography’s ontological relationship to rational analysis, the social structures of control, and the left-over institutional
spaces of empty corridors and rooms. Including work by: Caitlin Berrigan, Mary Billyou, Barbara Hammer, Kathy High, Katherin McInnis, & Martha Rosler. Filmmakers will be in attendance for conversation after. This project is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic
Media and Film Presentation Funds grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (www.NYSCA.org – www.eARTS.org).

Winter BBQ
Sunday March 4 (Rain Date: March 11)
5 – 10 pm

We invite you to shed the winter chill and come strut your stuff around the fiery BBQ, some delectable dips and some hot-baked goodness. We challenge you to enter in the trifecta of competitions: The Grillers, The Dippers, and The Bakers. We will rustle up some grills (or preferably BYOG – bring your own grill) and spread some table-clothes for the bowls of delicious dip and scrumptious desserts. Whether you will be competing or just coming to sample we also invite you share in the glorious tradition of potluck love – bring salads, potato salad, pickles, brownies, etc. anything you love to eat in the summer around the grill. There will be a collective judging by all the participants to select the most fantastic BBQ, the most amazing dip, and the most heavenly dessert. Prizes will be awarded! BYOB or drinks.

Your Day is My Night
Thursday March 8
7 pm

Inspired by theater visionaries Augusto Boal and the Wooster Group, this collaboration grows from performance workshops that began in 2010 and will continue through our live media and theater-based
exhibition in arts venues and public spaces. Sachs brings together Puerto Rican and Chinese participants who exchange stories around domestic life, immigration and personal-political upheaval. None of these people has ever worked in this cross-cultural way, so it is these process-oriented conversations on film and on stage that will, in the end, enhance their and their audience’s sense of the bed – experienced and imagined from profoundly different viewpoints.

Journey Into Darkness
Saturday March 10
7 pm

Kerry Laitala will present Journey into Darkness, a rare East Coast in-person screening by acclaimed filmmaker Kerry Laitala, whose work explores cinema’s relationship to sex and death, illness and illusion, lies and lyricism. Films include Secure the Shadow, a “meditation on disintegration and mortality” using Victorian era medical photography; Out of the Ether, a dizzying exploration of institutions and infection; Awake but Dreaming, an uncanny, alchemical constellation of image and sound made and processed in a
former youth prison. Laitala’s films are a unique combination of animation, hand-painting and processing, optical effects, and sculptural elements.This project is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (www.NYSCA.org – www.eARTS.org).

Join us on Tuesday, January 17th at 6:30pm to share your thoughts on what the future holds at Arts@Renaissance!

What is an art space? What is a community space? What are the responsibilities of bringing these two spaces together?

As part of Arts@Renaissance’s year-long assessment of the best uses for our new space we are hosting a community dialogue on Tuesday January 17. The evening will include a panel discussion among local leaders both in the arts and in other sectors on the responsibility of art in community.

The panel discussion be moderated by Laura Braslow of Arts in Bushwick and include Christopher Allen of Union Docs, Jason Andrew of Norte Maar, Ray Cross of Bushwick Print Lab, local storyteller and resident Jim O’Grady,  and A@R committee member Teresa Gonzalez as panelists.

The discussion will be followed by a conversation with the audience on future uses for the Arts@Renaissance space. In addition, audience members will be given a brief survey on their role in the community and their recommendations for Arts@Renaissance.

To RSVP email Chris at arts@stnicksalliance.org.

We want to hear your voice!

Looking for a way to support the local economy, local artists and give an absolutely killer gift this holiday season?

Now through January 9th Arts@Renaissance is offering originally-crafted postcards created by artists inspired by North Brooklyn.

Each 4×6 card reflects the unique character of our neighborhood and makes for the perfect keepsake. All proceeds of the $50 cards go to Arts@Renaissance.

There will be two special showings of the cards this Saturday and Sunday (12/17 & 12/18) from 1pm to 3pm at Arts@Renaissance, 2 Kingsland Avenue.

You can also view everything online HERE. To purchase work send an email to arts@stnicksalliance.org.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

Be the first to order up tickets for Arts@Renaissance fundraiser featuring custom-designed postcards by 100 artists! Discount tix start at $10. Get yours HERE.

During two weeks (Nov 7 to Nov 20) experts, professionals, design students, local residents, activists and the general public will get together to participate in a sequence of workshops to discuss local challenges and local initiatives and propose new ideas for sustainable change. Please join us at Arts@Renaissance at 2 Kingsland Avenue for the following events.

Exhibition Opening
November 10th (6:00pm – 9:00pm)
Parsons students from the TransDisciplinary MFA Design program will work with human-centered design methods and tools in order to explore the exhibition artifacts and propose scenarios, service ideas, toolkits, policy recommendations, around four major areas of social challenges and innovations identified in our project.
Free

Workshop 2: Recipes for Change
November 12th (10:00am – 5:00pm)
The online micro-philanthropic initiative ioby will launch its “Recipes for Change” toolkit, which will enable community leaders to propose and implement sustainable initiatives in their neighborhood.
RSVP: recipes4change.eventbrite.com
Free

Workshop 3: Share your Perspective – Think Global, Map Local!
November 16th (3:00 – 6:00 pm)
Green Map System, an organization that utilizes mapping to promote sustainable community development, will host a workshop for the North Brooklyn community. Teens encouraged to attend.
RSVP: arts@stnicksalliance.org
Free

Workshop 4: Designathon Challenge
November 20th (9:00am – 5:00pm)
Workshop organized by Shareable.net and part of the Share NYC event, a conference about the sharing economy hosted by DESIS Lab at The New School. In this workshop participants will be guided by Shana Dressler, co-founder of the Social Innovators Collective to explore how digital tools and platforms can enable the sharing economy. Event hosted at The New School university campus, 6 E. 16th Street.
$10 using the code DESIS7
RSVP/registration: milicent@shareable.net