Sequencing and Scaffolded Learning: Growing Your Art Practice

Young RHAP artists will move through discovery (workshops) to the art collective (collaborating, innovating) to mentored studio practice (reflecting, discerning, leading).  These will be cumulative so, for example, workshops will not only be an entry point for all students, but they will always be able, invited, and encouraged to participate.  The Art Collective will decide what criteria makes the most sense for them (application/invitation) for students to “graduate” to this next level when they are ready and, finally, once students are ready to also work on self-identified and self-directed projects, they will be ready to “graduate” to add the mentored studio practice.  A capstone or culminating project will be presented to the larger RHAP community, celebrated, and invited into more leadership positions as co-facilitator and mentor for the next generation of RHAP.

Building Capacities

Throughout the curriculum at RHAP, students develop four main capacities: Contemplative Practice (Being), Studio Habits of Mind (Making), Discernment and Embodiment in Social Context (Reflecting and Connecting), and Leadership and Listening (Presenting, Publishing, Performing).  Putting “Being” at the center, we believe self care, mindfulness, mutual aid, community support and learning are central to developing the capacities to a lifelong creative practice.  This always happens within the context of our embodied, social selves and lives that give literacy and support to naming systems and narratives of domination and to building art spaces that refuse them in order to move collectively and personally more toward freedom.

COVID-19 Protocol

mailing address

291 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231-1230

Download the Student Application.

The Principles of Design 

Tuesdays 5-7 pm

This course deals with design theories and textual analysis.  Emphasis is placed on script analysis in general, as well as the investigation of design principles from a designer's perspective.  Students also refine technical skills in rendering and presentation, historical research, and analysis.

• Balance

• Contrast

• Emphasis

• Proportion

• Pattern

• Rhythm

• Unity

• Variety

The Elements of Art / Portfolio Prep

Wednesdays 4-5 pm

This beginning art class teaches the elements of art.  This course is designed as a beginning art class for students wishing to pursue upper level art courses as well as for those who wish to satisfy their Fine Arts requirements for graduation.  Students will explore basic art media and techniques, such as drawing, painting, graphic design, photography, collage, ceramics, printmaking, and sculpture and more!  Art criticism, aesthetics, and art history are an integral part of the class. 

• Form

• Line

• Shape

• Space

• Texture

• Value

DIGITAL and MIXED MEDIA

Thursdays

5-7 pm

(developing)

BKLYN CLAY

Fridays 

4-6:30 pm

 BKLYN CLAY has been happy to host RHAP students for a series of lessons in ceramics. Students have been taught the basihand-buildingilding, wheel throwing, and surface design - including glazing and using varied materials.  Through this work, students have been encouraged to put down their devices and use their hands to express themselves.

Homework Help

Tuesday through Thursday 

3-4:45pm

“Believe in yourself and you can do unbelievable things.”

We offer homework help three afternoons a week during the school year.  Our volunteer tutors work with students one-on-one.  When homework is finished we work with some of the students in academic areas that need extra attention.  We follow our students’ grades and when needed we meet with parent/guardians and school guidance counselors.

Music Program

Fridays 

6-8 pm

The goals of RHAP’s Music Program are to:

• Introduce our students to creative freedom.

• Assist our students in their creative expression.

• Respect our students’ desires for certain types of creative expression.

• Provide our students with a safe, productive, and caring environment (respect the emotional needs of our students as they are progressing).

Most of our music lessons combine group singing, beat-making and electronic music production with recording.  We also have tutors giving one-on-one lessons in piano, ukulele and electric guitar.  As in our visual art classes, our lesson plans balance skill-building with play and critical thinking

Art Collective groups 

Saturdays

12 - 3 pm & 3:30-5:30 pm

The Artists Notebook/Studio Notes will build rituals, habits, and spaces to grow and develop our artist notebooks.  Older RHAP students talk about their notebooks with reverence and will help teach this practice to new facilitators and younger students.  Students will do reflections, inspiration boards and collage, “drawing with words” noticing practices, daily invitations to carve out time for silence and reflection.  There will be a space in RHAP for students to keep the notebooks as we build analogue personal and organizational archives.

The Artists Conference/Studio Visits: The artist conference emerges from the artists notebook and is a periodic chance to step back and reflect on the artist practice.  Facilitators, the art director, and mentors will build a conference schedule together so that each student is having a one on one conference monthly, a small group conference (with the Artistic Director and two other artist-mentors/facilitators/alumni) twice a year and able to report back to each other, write letters of progress for their file, and think together about how best to support each young artist.

FAMILY SUPPORT GROUP

Wednesday nights 

5:30-7pm

Everyone needs a little help coping with stress.  RHAP’s Stress Management workshops teach our students how to recognize stress and develop personalized self-care practices.  RHAP provides healthy alternatives to risky behaviors by supporting positive goals

Community Workshops

Social Mixer With BASIS Independent BrooklyN | K-12

The first month that I started working at BASIS Independent Brooklyn, we pulled together parents that truly wanted to make a difference in our local community. The discussion focused on how we could help local Red Hook families given how hard it is to raise kids, and how parents never have enough time between what is needed with work and home. Then we found out about the magic of RHAP, and realized we had to support what Tiffiney was doing with homework help and arts/design/music programming.

It was our honor and pleasure to host the 3rd annual RHAP Benefit here at the school lounge a few weeks ago. Families and local businesses offered donations for the event that included a silent auction this year. It was a wonderful night of celebrating the difference RHAP has made for families, and the team raised a significant amount to support RHAP overall and even bring digital photography programming to the kids. We also found more parent and student volunteers for homework help, and that is so important. Many thanks to everyone who supported the benefit, and know that your time and funding goes to an incredible cause!!!

Workshop With Brazilian artist Carolina Paz

Through a series of art practice workshops, “The present form, the future form” was a creative collective effort, that I proposed to the members of RHAP (Red Hook Art Project).

Students whose age is 6 to 18, participated in creating sculptural forms that tried to translate their perceptions, feelings, imaginary, and desires related to their present and futures lives. It was a very intense learning process for me, and many questions popped up during the whole experience.

I proposed open procedures to try to understand how we could work together. We tried to think visual elements separately (color, shapes, textures, etc.) in a free way to work with them. However, in the end, we developed a new whole structured work process: the manufacture of abstract sculptures based on our torsos sizes and forms. We created an assembly line process where using discarded materials, we built the forms, covered it with different fabrics, paste and tied the whole thing, and some we painted in the end — one by one. We worked freely, inside that structure, interfering in each one’s works — the result: singular characters, individuals that populate the gallery space, each with its name.

My deepest and sincere gratitude to Tiffiney and the RHAP girls who made me change a lot the way I see, today, art as a form to communicate, learn, and think. Special thanks to Luciana Solano, to Nathalie Anglès (RU) who introduced me to Tiffany and to Jane Herro who generously welcomed this exhibition on Realty Collective.