This Saturday, October 1st, 2011 we’ll be hosting a playdate at Tierra de la Culebra Art Park.
240 S. Ave. 57
Los Angeles, CA 90042
11am – 1pm.
We’ll be there with the kids.
Come join the fun!
xo,
El Rio
This Saturday, August 27th, 2011 – and every last Saturday of the month – it’s time for another playdate at Tierra de la Culebra Art Park.
11am – 2pm. We’ll be there with the kids.
Come join the fun!
xo,
El Rio
Our Fundraiser, Launch Party, and Silent Art Auction at Tiara Cafe was a great success!
We raised over $10,000.
The dinner tickets sold out. The Silent Art Auction sold out. The food was AMAZING. The music was fantastic. There was a feeling of excitement at the start of something big.
Take a look at these pictures.
And THANK YOU for supporting El Rio Charter School.
Fundraising Dinner at Tiara Cafe
Chef Fred Eric talks about his own Waldorf education. Thanks Fred!
Joan Jaeckel talks about eating, playing and GIVING!
A couple of the pieces in the art auction: A ceramic vessel by Kelly Breslin and a signed print by Shepard Fairey.
Jeff regards the art.
Our Founders; Anna Sarah Russell and Joan Jaeckel.
Jennifer gives a welcome speech.
Dinner music by Preston Smith.
Julia P, Anna Sarah and friend, and Kirsten.
Julia and Jon.
Julia and Jenn.
Kick off the summer with us!
Join the development team and our families on Saturday, June 25th from 11am to 1pm for a play date with the parents of el Rio.
We’ll be at La Tierra de la Culebra Art Park, located at 240 South Avenue 57 in Highland Park.
From their website:
Look for Development Team member Kim Ilas under the trees.
Kim is striking and tall and mocha-skinned and has long dread locks and twin daughters.
See you there!
Here is a sneak preview of a few of the art pieces that will be available at the silent art auction during our Eat/Play/Give Launch Party and Fundraiser on June 11th.
A huge original painting by Sage Vaughn (!), Sculptural pieces from Nora Jean Petersen and Kelly Breslin. Photographs from Andy Mueller, Jeaneen Lund, and Ginny Cook. Limited edition Prints from Tim Biskup, Seonna Hong, and William Wray. A work on paper from Hadley Holliday and sooooo much more!
You’ve got to be there to bid so purchase your tickets to the event NOW!
“Butterfly Ring” by Sage Vaughn, 2011.
Hand Pulled Serigraph on Coventry Rag Substrate with Hand Painted Butterflies. Signed and numbered limited edition of 24. 36 x 48”.
Sage Vaughn’s work explores notions of control and release as well as the fundamental need for survival, love and liberty.
Gradations of oil paint are slowly built up layer by layer with brilliantly hued subjects taking centre stage within a muted urban backdrop of dreamy pastels. Wild animals run freely through the urban setting and masked children void of inhibitions heroically feature within downtrodden neighborhoods. Such imagery embodies the limits of humankind’s ability to outright conquer the exterior world as well as completely repress inner desires. Vaughn says, “These compulsory wild impulses propel both the feral and the tame throughout our lives, causing beautiful and sometimes savage moments.”
His current solo exhibition at Lazarides, London – “Children of a Lesser God” – has been extended due to popular demand.
Past exhibitions include solo shows at Galerie Bertrand and Gruner in Geneva, as well as Art Agents Gallery, Hamburg, and Corey Helford Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sage lives and works in Los Angeles.
More information can be found here.
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“Flaming Ghost Blossom” by Tim Biskup, 2010. Limited Edition Serigraph Print on Archival Paper. No. 81 of a signed and numbered edition of 200. 20″ x 16″. Biskup is a Southern California fine artist whose work has been shown worldwide, including galleries and museums in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Kyoto, Barcelona, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Melbourne. Long recognized for his complex color and design theories and a decidedly populist aesthetic, Biskup has amassed a cadre of loyal fans and collectors. Recent years have seen the artist tend towards more complex, personal and conceptual work while maintaining a commitment to visual experimentation. Much more info is here.
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“Bird Virus” by Tim Biskup, 2010. Limited Edition Serigraph Print on Archival Paper. No. 19 of a signed and numbered edition of 200. 24″ x 18″.
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“War Party” by Tim Biskup, 2010. Limited Edition Serigraph Print on Archival Paper. No. 149 of a signed and numbered edition of 150. 20″ x 20″.
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“Mont Blanc 8(3)” by Kathleen Johnson, 2003-2006. Chromogenic print on Sintra. 17.5″ x 15.75″. Johnson’s work investigates fantastic landscapes, both real and imagined, based on the miraculous yet overlooked spaces of everyday life. The artist’s projects explore realms that easily straddle the plausible and the incredible. Her work is a hallucinatory vision of what might be present in the most ordinary of spaces. Awakening us to the wondrous properties of these quotidian worlds, Johnson’s ongoing Pools photographic series imagines a lost Atlantis architecture in which Lovecraftian ice mountains emerge from the floor of the common and unsuspecting Southern Californian back yard swimming pool.
Johnson received a BFA from Otis Art Institute and an MFA from the University of Southern California. Past projects include a solo exhibition at Lucas Schoormans Gallery, NY; The Minded Swarm at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; and exhibition and performance at David Patton Los Angeles and a multi-year project with Taalman Koch Architecture for High Desert Test Sites.
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“Reflect” by Ginny Cook, 2003. Photograph. 10″ x 10″.
Ginny Cook’s work engages the intersection of language and image in order to explore decay, mortality and loss related to natural and domestic landscapes.
Ginny Cook received her BA in Art History from Emory University in 2000 and her MFA in Photography and Media from the California Institute of the Arts in 2005. Recent exhibitions include Sign/Co-Sign, curated by Light&Wire at Miami Basel, Light & Wire at Circus Gallery (Los Angeles) and Complicity: Contemporary Photography and the Matter of Sculpture, at Rena Bransten Gallery (San Francisco). Her work has also been shown at the Hockney Gallery at the Royal College of Art (London, England), LAX International Airport (Los Angeles), Steven Wolf Fine Arts (San Francisco), AndrewShire Gallery and Norma Desmond Productions (Los Angeles, Armory Center for the Arts (Los Angeles), and the National Center for the Arts (CENAR) (San Salvador, El Salvador). Cook is co-founder and co-editor of MATERIAL, a journal of artists’ writings as well as a collaborative project including readings, curated shows, screenings and other events. Her text Some Notes on Plants was included in MATERIAL Issue Two, which launches December 3, 2009 at Whitechapel Gallery (London) and in Los Angeles in early 2010. She lives and works in Los Angeles. More information can be found here.
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“Pool Horse” by Jeaneen Lund, 2007. Photograph. 12″ x 16″.
Jeaneen Lund grew up in Hollywood, CA and discovered her love of photography while attending Fairfax High School and documenting her friends out at dance clubs. Spontaneity within the photographic process is essential to her work, whether creating a scenario or capturing a fleeting moment of the friends and life around her. Though mainly self-taught, she has turned photography into a career and some of her clients include Dazed and Confused, Nylon, Vice, Teen Vogue, ANP, Glamour UK, L’Officiel, SPIN, Capitol Records, Nike and Nintendo.
Her photos have been exhibited internationally including the Colette gallery in Paris. She’s had the pleasure of photographing Snoop Dogg, Bat For Lashes, Daft Punk, MIA and several others. Many of her shoots have turned into dance parties!
Jeaneen has recently directed, shot and edited music videos. More information can be found here.
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“Tranquil Bay” by Seonna Hong, 2010. No. 92 of a signed and numbered edition of 100 Giclee Prints. 5″ x 8.5″. Seonna Hong is a Los Angeles based artist, active in both the fine art and animation communities. Her paintings have appeared in exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, the Pacific Northwest and Tokyo, Japan.
Seonna Hong is a unique artist who is active as an animator, and has the achievement of winning an Emmy award. The paintings that Hong creates however, are full of originality and magical charm, and aren’t confined to her career history. Her endearing motifs of young girls and animals, trees and plants, the space that opens up over the whole image, and the ubiquitous young girls with black hair create a feeling of nostalgia. And in all of that, you can sense elements of sadness, confusion, and unease in her paintings, that are earning high praise in the museums and galleries of her mother country, America. [bio from gallery Kaikai Kiki, Japan] More information can be found here.
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“Into The Forest” by Seonna Hong, 2010. No. 92 of a signed and numbered edition of 100 Giclee Prints. 5″ x 8.5″
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“Breezy Hillhock” by Seonna Hong, 2010. No. 92 of a signed and numbered edition of 100 Giclee Prints. 5″ x 8.5″
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“Mercedes Benz” by Andy Mueller, 2010. Photograph. Andy Mueller was raised in the mid-west on a healthy diet of BMX, skateboarding, music and magazines. At an early age, Andy became addicted to the art of image making and photo taking. In 1993, Andy founded OhioGirl Design, a small design/photo/film studio. In 1997, Andy started “The Quiet Life”, as an outlet for purely creative ideas, with a few friends from within OhioGirl.
Andy currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two cats, bird, and his young son. More information on Andy Mueller can be found here.
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“Go El Rio” is an original pen drawing in a handmade frame made especially for this event by Jeff Jamieson, 2011. Jeff Jamieson was born in Claremont, California in 1960. He graduated with honors from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1984, with a B.F.A. in ceramics. He worked as an assistant to Donald Judd from 1989 to 1994.
Jamieson returned to California in 1994 and started a furniture fabrication company, Wood and Plywood Furniture.
He is the fabricator of Donald Judd’s furniture and has also fabricated furniture for the Josef & Anni Alber’s foundation. Jamieson has for many years, and still continues, to work very closely with the Chinati Foundation, most recently putting the final touches on a three year project that culminated with the presentation of a new, permanent, large scrim work by Robert Irwin, that was unveiled at the Chinati Open House in October, 2006. He currently owns and operates the Compact Gallery in San Luis Obispo.
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“Black Square” by Hadley Holliday, 2011. acrylic and pencil on paper, 12”x12”. Hadley Holliday was born in Kansas City and currently lives in Los Angeles where she received her MFA from Cal Arts in 2004. Her paintings explore a collision of geometric abstraction, ritual experimentation, broken systems, forgotten rules, mistakes and play. Holliday’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at Sam Lee Gallery in Los Angeles.
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“Birds in Trees” by Chris Stiles, 2011. Sculptural wall hanging made from dried manzanita branches, bases made of hardwood ash and porcelain birds. Every bird is hand carved by the artist and placed on the manzanita branches. Each branch is carefully selected for its unique graceful lines. 10″ x 14″ x 5.5″ Deep.
Chris Stiles has always been drawn to working with his hands and has described his relationship with materials as a conversation. There is as much give as take between these two independent forces and the relationship is truly a friendship. The challenge of this friendship is to create a balance between the materials’ needs and one’s own thoughts.
A common thread running through Chris’s work is the ability to be: inventive, inviting, playful, tactile and most importantly expressive of the human spirit. These elements are why people find his work so endearing. When talking about art and design, Chris is often quoted as saying, “It’s just material until someone sculpts their thoughts into it.”
After receiving a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from California State University Long Beach in 1992, the next step in his educational training was to work within industry. While working in industry, different techniques and tools revealed new avenues to express creativity. Chris found industry to be invaluable in helping him to find his own voice.
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Ceramic Vessel by Kelly Breslin, 2011. Iron oxide finish w/ glazed interior. Pine needle imprint. 21″ x 12″ x 5.5″ deep.
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Wood Cutting Board by Kelly Brakefield, 2011.
Handmade especially for this event by the artist from upcycled butchers block with inlays of mahogany, purple heart, and birch.
A native of Los Angeles, Kelly was a career gal through and through until 2003 when motherhood came calling. Seven years later, with a beautiful daughter in tow, she developed a love of woodworking and currently juggles the trials and tribulations of freelance, single parenting and developing the skills necessary to keep all her limbs intact while creating one-of-a-kind, functional pieces out of salvaged specialty woods.
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“Drawing of Great Dane with Boy” by Mari Eastman, 2010. Prismacolor and Pen on Illustrator Board. Mari Eastman graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is represented by Cherry and Martin gallery in Los Angeles where her most recent show was in April of this year. She lives and works in Los Angeles. More information on Mari Eastman can be found here.
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“Untitled” by Alicia Sterling Beach, 2010. Original Pastel Drawing. 17″ x 14″. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, schooled on the US east coast with an MFA from Irvine, Alicia Beach has shown at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, LACE, Rosamund Felsen Gallery (Santa Monica) and many group exhibitions. Some of her most recent paintings were created en plein air, with the immediacy of action and painting driven by the sensation of nature.
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“76″ by William Wray, 2010. Silkscreen. No. 06 of a signed and numbered edition of 20. 20″ x 26″. William Wray has lived in California most of his life and studied painting at the Art Students League in New York.
Making his living as a cartoonist who specialized in painted subjects, he spent many years coalescing a eclectic array of art styles, ultimately finding his voice in a contemporized reflection of traditional California regional painting that focus on humble subject matter rarely considered as fine art.
Wray blends traditional skill sets of realism and the sheer energy of abstract expressionism in an ongoing evolution to find the balance between two seemingly unrelated styles. More information can be found here.
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“Untitled” An original pastel drawing made especially for this event by Brian Smith. 2011. 5″ x 5″. About his work, Brian says, “I took up Visual art as a hobby in the mid-eighties, and have since shown my work in gallery and museum shows internationally since 1989. Most of my works are small paintings or pastel works on paper done in a naïve style. I began doing animation color and design as a career in 1995, and I currently work on the new Scooby Doo Mystery Inc. series for Warner Bros.” More information can be found here.
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“Novenpus” by Ron Russell. 2011. Acrylic on Masonite made especially for this event. 4″ x 4″. Ron Russell received a BFA in painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been working as an animation Background Painter for 14 years at studios such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
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“Dying is Easy” by Nora Murphy-Berden. Original Acrylic on Canvas. 19 x 17.5″. Nora lives in the LA area with her husband and two cats. She is a background painter in the animation industry and Recent Creative Emmy Award winner.
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“Untitled” by Nora Jean Petersen, 2011. Wood, Foam, Paper, Ultracal, Spray Enamel, Permanent Marker. 5″ x 23″ x 3″. Nora Jean Petersen grew up in Houston, Texas and Cairo, Egypt and now lives in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from Art Center in 2006.
Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including University of California, Berkeley; Gallery Nomadenoase, Hamburg; Karen Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles; China Art Objects, Los Angeles; and Circus Gallery, Los Angeles. She is interested in the capability of the static object to reflect time, fiction, and movement. More information can be found here.
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Our dear friend Kim sent this email out to all her Mommy connections. I was so moved I asked Kim if I could re-post here. Thank you Kim, we love you too!
Here’s what she writes:
Dear Mommy community,
I have had countless conversations with parents frustrated with the options available to them as they launch from the preschool years to the elementary years. Whether they are not happy with the local public school options, whether they got in or wait listed at one of the charters in their area, whether they can afford the $180,000 it would take to put one child thru to just the 8th grade… let alone the buckets of money needed for high school and college!!!! Those just address the “getting in” & financial part of it all… how about which school is actually the best fit for the individual child… or is there even a good fit among the options available! My head is spinning with all that I will be faced with next year!!! I am in research mode… full force!!!
I had heard about Waldorf… I was admittedly narrow minded in my thinking and readily dismissed it (still more personal growth needed.. clearly!). Then, I heard about this new school trying to get started in our area called “El Rio.” I read that it had a sister school in Culver City called “Ocean Charter.” I jumped at the opportunity to attend an Open House which afforded me the opportunity to see Waldorf in the works and it BLEW my mind. I was astounded by the teachers, their caring and passion. I was touched by the children and how they treated one another which respect and grace. I was impressed beyond belief with the deep connection between the teachers, students and the material they were learning. And there is this Waldorf thing.. that I didn’t know was a Waldorf thing.. but I identified it as a rhythm… and strangely enuf.. that’s what they call it.. there was a rhythm in the classroom that was as if the children had choreographed movements when it came time to putting their paintings away, cleaning brushes, putting supplies in cabinets, helping and working together.. it was beautiful. It seems so silly.. but I was awe struck by how they were all so in synch with one another. Classrooms were warm, with gentle lighting, there weren’t walls covered with distractions of all the materials that were to be learned during the year… just simple and beautiful. I could go on and on!!!! I had never seen anything like this before….this was exactly the environment that I wanted for my boys…. EXACTLY!!!!! Just to show you how in love with it I was… I applied for my son to go to Kindergarten (in spite of the hour plus commute)… we didn’t get in. I know we are not the only family from this area (NELA) who applied (I met a few others) and I even met a man who commuted from Ventura County to Ocean Charter daily for his Kindergarten aged daughter and he didn’t regret it — not for a second!!! This school is in HIGH demand & for good reason.
The good news… and I mean REALLY GREAT NEWS… is that El Rio Charter, which holds the same philosophy as Ocean Charter, is coming to our area and it will take this village… OUR village… to make it a reality. Now, I am “just a mom”- I have no affiliation with this school, however I believe in it wholeheartedly and I hope to the high heavens that it can become an option, most likely the best option, we might have for our family when it opens it’s doors in September 2012!
Of course.. anything that brings big change take big effort … LAUSD requires that Charter schools be fully self-funding for the first year…. so here’s where we step in as a community….
Please take a moment to look at El Rio’s website, join their mailing list, become a “friend” on Facebook. If you feel, as I do, that this school would be an asset to the children in our community…. join them for their fundraising launch party called “EAT PLAY GIVE” that will be held on June 11th at Fred Eric’s (of Fred 62) Tiara Café…. dinner, drinks, tapas, music, art auction and discussions about what this school is all about. If you can’t join in the celebration…. and you want to contribute…. please do so.
If you want more information, send an email to the address on the website, post it on Facebook and if you have any questions that I can help you with… go ahead and shoot ‘em my way! I’d be happy to share with you what I know. I have attended some volunteer meetings and I am beyond impressed with the organization, devotion and passion of this stalwart group of parents and educators. The more I learn about El Rio, the more excited I become. I hope you can take the time to learn more to see if this is something that might excite you as well… for your own children and for the children in our greater community. I hope you don’t mind me sharing this school with you … I believe strongly that all good things are to be shared… and this one is reallllyyyy good!!
Here is the website for El Rio…. www.elriocharterschool.org
If you feel this is something you want to share with others…. GO FOR IT!!
Sincerely,
Kim
An MIT researcher bugged his entire house with video cameras and microphones to capture and study the speech development of his newborn son. Pretty cool TED talk. check it.
We have so much fun at these play dates, we’re doing it again! This time Kim is bringing a refrigerator box for the kids to play with/in.
Join the development team and our families on Saturday, March 5th from 11am to 1pm for a play date for the parents of el Rio.
We’ll be at La Tierra de la Culebra Art Park, located at 240 South Avenue 57 in Highland Park.
From their website:
Look for Development Team member Kim Ilas under the trees.
Kim is striking and tall and mocha-skinned and has long dread locks and twin daughters.
<—— There she is now!
See you there!
Thank you to all who attended an El Rio volunteer meeting and/or the Workspace For Teachers Meeting(s).
Committees are being formed, decisions are being made, wheels are beginning to turn… Stay tuned.
On behalf of the El Rio Development Team, we are excited to be working with such a talented group of people as we move forward to making El Rio a reality.
And I’ll say personally that your devotion to el Rio warms my heart. I am re-inspired and motivated.
