A page from the journal of Triada Samaras

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The road to New Jersey and Back is impossible to describe.  How light flows from one place to another and on top of things is one beginning.  How we all reflect that light knowingly or not is another piece. Triada Samaras

STEAM EmPOWERMENT at Paterson Eastside High School this school year

One of the most interesting projects I am involved with this year as an interdisciplinary artist and educator involves a Geraldine M. Dodge grant to create, develop and implement STEAM Curriculum at Eastside High School in Paterson, NJ.  STEAM puts the A for Art in the middle of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.  This means Art teachers collaborating with science, math, etc. teachers and it can be a very good thing if done thoughtfully.  Officially I have the title of WPU/William Paterson University "Art Professor in Residence"/Art PIR and I work with a highly talented team taht includes:  STEAM Grant Manager and WPU Science PIR, Dina Scachetti;  and Art Teachers, Marilyn Simon and Darryl Jones who are both practicing artists.

What can happen when science and art teachers and WPU PIR'S collaborate?  One gorgeous example is pictured below:  the Georgia O'Keefe Flowers and Bones project done in Mrs. Simon's art class.  Students learned about science (flowers and bones and Georgia O'Keefe's love of nature) while they created these amazing art works.  

Below I am pictured with the Eastside High School Science Supervisor Levette Glanton and we are discussing how a plumb line can help me hang the art works and plastic straighter.



Below is another wall of STEAM art work wall I hung at Eastside High School recently. This art work comes from Mr. Darryl Jones' art class and is student-driven and research based.  Mr. Jones is working with the idea that both the artistic and scientific processes are similar and that if students are encouraged to do research in studio art class, then this learned skill will transfer over to their other classes such as biology or history.

As the creator of the STEAM blog, I found my community activism blogger background came in very handy.  My previous CORD blog and blogging has taught me a great deal.
 
Moreover, social media proves to be extremely useful as an exhibition, documentation, and communication tool for this Paterson High School community.  Triada

Using Collage in the Early Childhood Classroom

This post is for early childhood art teachers and educators who are looking for a simple, cheap and process-based method for using collage in the classroom. For this collage activity, just need some black and white paper and lots of willing fingers.

Please see my published article:

Picturing Good Practice:  "Using Collage to Encourage Creativity, High-Level Thinking and Conversation!" by Triada Samaras And Janis Strasser with Michele Russo

was published at:
TYC Journal February/March 2012 - Vol. 5, No. 3   

NAEYC/National Association for the Education of Young Children 

 You can order a back copy from NAEYC here:  http://www.naeyc.org/tyc/pastissues

However I will get around to scanning the article and placing it here one of these days soon! 

Triada

TYC Journal February/March 2012 - Vol. 5, No. 3 published by NAEYC/National Association for the Education of Young Children.

 

Interdisciplinary Artist, Triada Samaras, exhibiting photographs in Odessa, Ukraine

For Immediate Release 7/23/2013

Interdisciplinary Artist, TRIADA SAMARAS

www.triadasamaras.com

in

Friendship through Art Can Change the World

INTEGRATION Art Exhibition

with
AthensArt International Arts Festival Odessa/Ukraine 2013

18 July- 3 August

Gallery Apartment No 10

Odessa, Ukraine

81 artists from 27 countries

E Catalogue

http://issuu.com/ca4s/docs/athensart_international_arts_festiv?e=356382

TV News

http://atv.odessa.ua/news/2013/07/19/internatsionalnaya_vistavka_7992.html

Photos

http://athensart-2010.ning.com/photo?xg_source=msg_mes_network

     

      Artist, Triada Samaras, is exhibiting two of her photos from the photographic series, From New York to New Jersey and Back in the Integration Art Exhibition with AthensArt International Arts Festival Odessa/Ukraine 2013, chairman Dr. Prof. Takis Alexiou, Athens Greece. One of her photographs depicts a night scene on the streets of Brooklyn, NY illuminated by raindrops and traffic lights.  The other art work shows a traffic toll booth in New Jersey with the many multicolored blinking lights seen when approaching the  tollbooth.

     As an interdisciplinary and socially engaged artist, Samaras’ work often grapples with contentious environmental, geographic, social and economic issues in New York City and in Greece. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and venues including the Sierra Club, Vital Space, Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Old Stone House, Kentler International Drawing Center, Macy Gallery, Columbia University, Nancy Dreyfus Gallery, Kean University, Goddard College, Governors Island and numerous blogs and online sites. She is the creator of the forum “Enoikiazetai/Poleita- For Rent/For Sale” at AthensArt International Arts Festival:

http://athensart-2010.ning.com/group/for-rent-for-sale-enoikiazetai-poleitai

For more info: contact the artist:

Email triadasamaras@gmail.com Cell 917-558-6157

The Power of Friendship.....

The following is my comment on the text of Professor Takis Alexiou located at AthensArt

Dearest Takis,
I have been reading with pleasure your: Prof. Dr. Taki Alexiou 
The Power of Friendship/ From the Tyranny of Markets to the Society of Citizens 
Below I make a few beginning comments.

First I would like to say that your text needs to be savored slowly and I am already beginning to read it for the second time.  This is, of course, my great compliment to you.  Your text's multiple references to history: both events and people make it wise in term of the past, timely, and also prophetic and all points in time occur simultaneously in your text.  I am very impressed with these aspects. 

This is not an easy text to absorb if one still has blinders on, and, unfortunately, many in our world do wear these blinders: as a means of defense, as a means to remain and apathetic, and as a means  to maintain the status quo.  A second group is perhaps more innocently in the dark due to the penchant our educational system has for "dumbing us down".  (See John Taylor Gatto: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/bookstore/dumbdnblum1.htm)

As a long time artist and educator I have worked hard with this second group to perhaps broaden their outlook regarding the nature and power of art, creativity, and their own artistic process in THEIR lives as opposed to mine) for many years.  For example see my work:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjFx-OlXT10
 
An artist whose work I deeply admire for a wide variety of reasons is Joseph Beuys who said, "Every man (woman) is an artist" and I quote him often often. Like Beuys I believe that art belongs to every man, woman, and child (to the people) and not only to a privileged or gifted few.  See my work: http://peerseminar.blogspot.com/2009/09/photograph-of-original-muraldemocracy.html

The notion that every man (woman) is an artist is a central idea for me, as a working artist, as a teaching artist, and as a community activist artist (socially-engaged) artist.  It means that every human being can unlock his/her own art and art making.  Then, art can be freed from the stifling classifications that usually assign it to the realms of politics and the economy (as you mentioned) thereby removing its possibility as a transformative vehicle for society.  My interest in "socially-engaged" art comes from my deep belief that each human being by birthright has the power and the capacity to make great art.  Of course I am hardly alone in my thinking.  (See also artists: Tim Rollins/ KOS;  Suzanne Lacy, and many others;  See text:  Education for Socially Engaged Art by Pablo Helguera;  See http://www.democracy-in-motion.eu/en/tour-program/athens/ ;See this current exhibition at my alma mater, The Museum School in Boston: http://www.smfa.edu/egypt-dialogue  Takis, your text is inherently related to these ideas and situated in the midst of them.  Or perhaps it surrounds them?

With regards to your words on art:
"When poetry, like any other art form, can be something anyone can do then the poet will be a human like everybody else, liberated from all the psychological misery of our catastrophic greed, exacerbated individualism, and deified ego…"     I am not sure I agree with the totality of your statements regarding whether the artist can be truly freed from suffering all the sins of the worst aspects of human nature.  Here, I speak based on my experience as a lifelong artist whose demons have not always been external.  But, yours is a hopeful vision. 

Takis, I think that your ideas on friendship and brilliant and powerful.  For example you write, "Friendship...accompanies the sum of man's functions".  It requires...knowledge and participation which is the most important prerequisite for the foundation of a better society."
I agree wholeheartedly with you.

You say several times that "A new beginning can be made" (with the realization that the old way is transitioning out).  In this, I find the hope and the lightness and the joy that is possible in reading your text, Takis.  For if you are correct, and I do believe you are, then we can all of us look forward to a better future together in friendship and civility one day soon, and not bother to waste our energy bemoaning the loss of an out-of-date, often violent, antiquated and selfish system that has run its course in the history of humanity. 
warmly, triada

"Sierra Club tracks Gowanus Canal Superfund Clean-Up" CG CORD and Triada Samaras photo and words featured.

Hello from Triada!

I am pleased to announce that a photograph of the flooding Gowanus Canal taken during Hurricane Sandy by myself, an artist and a CORD Co-Founder;  and a CG CORD commentary on the impacts of Sandy on the Gowanus Canal area written by me were featured recently in the City Sierran:  A Publication of the Sierra Club's New York City Group (Fall 2012) (page 3) next to an article on the Gowanus Canal clean-up process by Diane Buxbaum.  

My "Brooklynites Worst Collective Dream Come True"  (page 3) describes  the night of Sandy in detail and poses several urgent points including:

) Carroll Garden's flooded Evacuation route (Third Street over the Gowanus Canal) that was entirely impassable the night of Sandy.
2) The chemical and toxic effects of the Superfunded Gowanus Canal waters spilling into the community's streets, sidewalks and basements.
3) The fact that the Gowanus Canal corridor is slated for future development even though it is in Zone A and in obvious harm's way from the Canal floodwater.
4)  The trend of both rising sea levels and super storms all over NY due to global warming trends.

In an article entitled "Sierra Club tracks Gowanus Canal Superfund Clean-Up" (see below) NYC Group Gowanus Canal Cleanup Committee Chair, Buxbaum summarizes the Gowanus Canal clean-up to date, emphasizing that there will be a 60 day public comment period after the EPA releases its plan in December.  The Sierra Club plans to provide info to those who might wish to submit a letter.

Buxbaum writes, one of the main concerns of the Gowanus CAG/Community Advisory Board is that the City of NY insure that the NYC DEP do a complete job of addressing the CSO's (combined sewere overflows) that cause recontamination of the Canal with toxins and materials that will cause continuing sediment deposition from the discharges.  The CIty of NY has opposed the Superfund designation from the outset, and has offered only token CSO proposals.

CORD has also expressed deep concern with the CSO's situation in the Gowanus Canal in a recent post. See http://carrollgardenspetition.blogspot.com/2012/12/new-york-state-decdept-environmental.html

About the Sierra Club:  

In 1892, John Muir and a number of his supporters founded the Sierra Club to, in Muir's words, "do something for wildness and make the mountains glad." Muir served as the Club's president until his death in 1914. Read more about the history of the Sierra Club.  Today, the Sierra Club has over 1.3 million members and supporters and is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. Find out more about the Sierra Club.  LINK

Press Release 12/15/2012

Triada Samaras

www.triadasamaras.com  

email: triadasamaras@gmail.com 

       

For Immediate Release 12/15/2012

Interdisciplinary Artist, Triada Samaras, presents:

The State of Greece 2012:  Enoikiazetai-Poleitai / For Rent-For Sale

at Vital Space

LINK  LINK  

This art project is an online photographic, socially-engaged, and textual one, featuring writings by art critic, Susan Handler, and writer, Yiannis Zaglaris. It also features an interactive Facebook page for viewers and the public to participate in this project. LINK

What:  The State of Greece 2012:  Enoikiazetai-Poleitai / For Rent-For Sale

With:  Triada Samaras at Vital Space / Urbanization and Emptiness

Where:  http://www.vitalspace.org/projects/art-projects

Date:  On-going

        What is the state of Greece today?  The photographic series: The State of Greece 2012: ΕΝΟΙΚΙΑΖΕΤΑΙ - ΠΩΛΕΙΤΑΙ: FOR RENT – FOR SALE explores this question…In a multitude of subtle and obvious ways, Greek economic austerity, as a theme, triumphs the Greek visual landscape in this moment. The words: ΕΝΟΙΚΙΑΖΕΤΑΙ - ΠΩΛΕΙΤΑΙ:  FOR RENT - FOR SALE dominate the streets, structures and spaces of Greece, repeating themselves ad nauseam along blocks of once occupied homes and shops, spelling out the current, disastrous Greek state of affairs.   It is impossible to ignore these signs, and their menacing forebodings. They point to the co-existent yet sometimes hidden stresses of poverty, and the lack of a clear future for Greece that are only too obvious to the people of Greece.

        As an interdisciplinary and socially engaged artist, Samaras’ work often grapples with contentious environmental, geographic, and social issues in New York City.  In addition to feeling an enormous compassion for the people of Greece, she states she cannot but help but notice the ominous similarities between the current Greek economic crisis and the less obvious one on American soil.

        Triada Samaras is an interdisciplinary and socially engaged artist living and working in NYC and at times, in Athens, Greece. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and venues including the Sierra Club, Vital Space, Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Old Stone House, Kentler International Drawing Center, and Macy Gallery, Columbia University, Kean University, Goddard College, Governors Island, NYC, and numerous blogs and online sites.

For more info: contact the artist.

Free Public Place Workshop Artwork #2

Hello!
Please see the blog I just posted at CORD:
http://carrollgardenspetition.blogspot.com/2012/05/free-public-place-workshop-artwork-2.html
to see a new featured Free Public Place Artwork! 

You can go straight to the Free Public Place Facebook page link above.  Please "like" us and send your feedback and ideas for a public, Public Place, after the EPA Superfund Clean-up!  Thank you.
triada

Please see this link for more information on the my recent Free Public Place Workshop with Carroll Gardens CORD/Coalition for Respectful Development.

We asked the question:  What do YOU think should happen at Public Place after the EPA Superfund clean-up?  Due to the great success of this art/activist workshop at the Old Stone House with the Brooklyn Utopias: Park Space, Play Space exhibition, the CORD blog will now start a feature artwork from the workshop weekly.

For more articles please see PMFA  "Dreaming Big:  A Community Envisions a True "Public Place" in Carroll Gardens.

I have launched my new website!  It is a work in progress and probably will be for some time to come. 

triadasamaras.com

A work on paper I made for Nick will be in a show soon (May 19) called the Kentler International Drawing Gallery 100 Works on Paper Benefit
http://www.kentlergallery.org/
The title for the piece is the same as Nick's blog: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step....

It is a small work on paper, done with colored pencil, 11 x 14 inches.



Nick got his breathing tube out today!
http://nicksamaras.wordpress.com/the-accident/
and I made a Healing Facebook Page for him at
http://www.facebook.com/healingpagenicholassamaras

We can not hold onto time and time passes quickly! A cello teacher I love dearly who passed away a number of years ago said to my young son before she departed: "Time waits for no man, son."

Images from Syntagma Sqaure: #3

Here is an image from Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece that needs no translation.

Not Here

There's courage involved if you want

to become truth. There is a broken-

open place in a lover. Where are

those qualities of bravery and sharp

compassion in this group? What's the

use of old and frozen thought? I want

a howling hurt. This is not a treasury

where gold is stored; this is for copper.

We alchemists look for talent that

can heat up and change. Lukewarm

won't do. Halfhearted holding back,

well-enough getting by? Not here.

From Soul of Rumi

by Coleman Barks









Photo by Triada Samaras, June 2011