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Published: 26 October 2011

Created: 26 October 2011

Last Updated: 29 October 2011

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The annual Halloween Window Painting took place in Scarsdale on Sunday October 23rd under sunny skies. The talented pool of young artists produced beautiful, colorful and clever works that are now on display for the community to view. 761 participants painted 471 windows around town.

The grand prize winner was Maggie O’Keefe, whose painting is pictured here on the left and can be seen at Chase Bank on Palmer Avenue. The awards ceremony will be held on Thursday November 3rd at 7:30 pm in the Quaker Ridge School auditorium.

See our gallery of the first place and grand prize winners and look at the results from the Recreation Department below:

Group I

1st Anastasia Stefanou

2nd Emma Schuh

3rd Phoebe Shearer

Most comical: Sidney Langford

Honorable Mentions:

Jordana Wiener

Jolie Kantor

Jordan Grossman

Ryan Dany

Sarah Wong

Group II

1st Isabella DeCastro

2nd Matthew Pollack

 

3rd Olivia Otsuka

Most comical: Lucy Cecil

Honorable Mentions:

Anne Conlan

Yihan Du

Emma Glaser

Ford Lenchner

Julia White

Margaret Kantor

Patrick Artes

Group III

1st Carla Segale

2nd Jack Cecil

3rd Amanda Glik

Most Comical: Ally LoSardo

Honorable Mentions:

Benjamin Jacobowitz

Kazuki Katoh

Riley Haffner

Julia Levy

Elya Lavi

Miles Barrow

Anna Giddins

Lyndsey Morton

Group IV

1st Place Serena Pratt

2nd Place Dorothea Stefanou

3rd Place Mary Cecil

Most Comical: Hannah Fuehrer

Honorable Mentions:

Alyssa Kaye

Katie Fehrenbaker

Anne Cohen

Lara Robinowitz

Lena Proctor

Emma Satin

Kathleen Kantor

Group V

1st Place: Caroline Huh

2nd Place: Juliana Maronilla

Group VI

1st Place Maya Mistry and Emily Yacoub

2nd Place Jeffrey Morse and Jaden Bharara

3RD Place Jonah Miller and Remi Tolchin

Most comical: Ryan Seibold and Jack Scheiner

Honorable Mentions:

Samuel Wank and Adam Wasserman

Emily Messerle and Danielle Kohn

Dylan Gross and Emily Aaron

Group VII

1st Place Rachel Meiselman and Maki Takeda

2nd Place: Elizabeth Shawn and Lucy Du

3rd Place: Jordana Love and Jessica Solodar

Most comical: DJ Matusz and Riley Schneider

Honorable Mention:

Tara Bleustein and Abby Lefkowitz

Bridget Dibbini and Angela Ferrigno

Abby Fehrenbaker and Aliza Klein

Group VIII

1st Sophie Cammarata and Theresa Alarcon

2nd Alexandra Fogel and Maya Kulick

3rd Margo Boxer and Emma Reed

Most comical: Arin Hendell and Carly Kessler

Honorable Mention:

Michelle Glantz and Gabriela Chiavenato

Renee Dibbini and Sara Hove

Jordan Kraut and Samantha Stiroh

Adina Mistry and Anika Agarwal

Brooke Bensche and Mia Bezos

Grace Vericker and Sophia Franco

Paige Panessa and Jolie Suchin

Madhavi Shashank and Anaya Barmecha

Claire Silberstein and Dale Pontone

Group IX

1st Abigail Haber and Rachel Haber

2nd Willow Malsch and Nadja Dwyer

3rd Cara Blumstein and Sophie Ulene

Most comical: Laura Morse and Anna Spiro

Honorable Mentions:

Kimberly Ellis and Zoe Millman

Chiaki Katoh and Sascha Eckersley

Katherine Guerney and Naomi Haber

Group X

1st Elizabeth Jacobs and Remy Weisbrot

2nd Emily Natbony and Allison Shein

3RD Carina Spiro and Anna Dursztman

Most Comical: Julia Dursztman and Arielle Green

 

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Published: 20 October 2011

Created: 20 October 2011

Last Updated: 20 October 2011

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The Scarsdale Adult School is offering an intriguing choice of art appreciation courses designed specifically to enhance your experience at current and upcoming exhibits in New York City museums. Don’t miss out on these courses on Rodin, De Kooning and the Impressionists.

On Tuesday, October 25, 2011, Jane Mayo Roos, professor emerita of art history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center in New York, traces the astonishing career of Auguste Rodin. The lecture explores how Rodin, who was born in poverty and denied artistic training, emerged to become one of history’s most renowned sculptors. This class meets from 1 to 3 p.m. at Wayside Cottage at a cost of $30.

“De Kooning and Friends: Exploring the New York School Post World War II” is a two-session series that complements and prepares students to view the de Kooning retrospective currently at the Museum of Modern Art. Instructor Rick Starr, on the art department faculty at Rye Country Day School, will delve into Willem de Kooning’s abstract expressionist paintings as well as his association with other New York artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. This $50 class meets on Thursdays from 7:15 to 9:15 p.m. beginning October 27, 2011, at the Scarsdale High School.

In “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde,” instructor Elizabeth Thompson Colleary, art teacher at the Scarsdale High School and consultant at the Whitney Museum of American Art, will lecture on the works to be featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from February to June 2012. The American expatriate Stein family living in bohemian Paris—writer Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife, Sarah—were among the first to recognize the talents of avant-garde painters like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The coming exhibition will be the first time in a generation that dozens of the Steins’ holdings, including works by Matisse, Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, will be reunited. This $50 two-part lecture series meets on Mondays from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Scarsdale High School beginning November 7, 2011.

To register, please visit www.ScarsdaleAdultSchool.org or call (914) 723-2325 with any questions.

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Published: 04 October 2011

Created: 04 October 2011

Last Updated: 04 October 2011

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It’s the season for fall openings at New York’s museums and an exceptional exhibit of Picasso’s early drawings is now on display at the Frick Collection. The show is titled, “Picasso’s Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition,” and it offers a unique opportunity to gain an understanding of the roots of Picasso’s genius.

On display are Picasso’s earliest works including some pieces from private collections that have never been on view before. Curators have assembled this exhibition by borrowing from diverse sources including the Musee Picasso in Barcelona, the National Gallery in Washington and the Foundation Beyeler in Basel.

The sequence of the exhibit traces Picasso’s development from a classical master draftsman to the leading force in the modern art movement. The son of Jose Ruiz Blaso, a drawing instructor and provincial painter, Picasso started to draw at a very young age. At sixteen Picasso entered the Real Academia de Belles Arts de San Fernando in Madrid and a charcoal and black pencil drawing of a torso from that time shows his knowledge of proportion, linear perspective and form. After a few months he felt had learned all he could there and left. He returned to Barcelona and the show includes a self portrait he did in 1901 at the age of 20 showing a searching young man. In 1904 he moved to Paris, and many of the drawings in the show date from that era. On view are colorful and bold drawings that were the studies for Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles D’Avignon,” with brash brush strokes that were a departure from traditional techniques. One of the pleasures of looking at drawings rather than paintings is that you can see the artist at work; and in these studies Picasso played with the position of hands and feet, or the depiction of a head in profile or from behind.

As he developed he moved away from his classical training and started to play with form, decomposing his subjects into sleek planes and sharp angles. From 1909- 1914 he worked closely with Georges Braque and the exhibit includes several still lifes and an innovative collage, Composition with a Violin, done by Picasso that closely resembles Braque’s work. Picasso’s embrace of cubism is evident in his fractured charcoal drawings where the viewer looks hard to locate a stray foot or an eye in an effort to re-assemble the subject of the drawing.

Also on view are more classical portraits by Picasso of some of the era’s leading luminaries – including Stravinsky, and the art dealer Ambroise Vollard who gave Picasso his first one-man show.

Upstairs, there are several super-sized pastels of women that Picasso created during a summer in Fontainebleau in 1921 including “Woman with Flowered Hat” and the dramatic “Head of a Woman.” In these larger-than-life works, Picasso experimented with scale and monumentality and the drawings dwarf the small room in which they are hung. Don’t miss them on your way out.

Also take a few minutes to explore the Frick, originally a private mansion built in 1913-14 that spans an entire block of Fifth Avenue. The mansion was designed by architects Carrere and Hastings who also designed the New York Public Library. The beautiful interior courtyard surrounds a fountain as does the elegant exterior garden.

The Frick Collection
10 East 71st Street
New York, N.Y. 10021

To purchase tickets online, visit: http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/picasso/

 

 

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Published: 21 September 2011

Created: 21 September 2011

Last Updated: 22 September 2011

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The other day, I went to the movies by myself. In the middle of the afternoon! I felt so…decadent. So free! I only manage do this a few times a year, but each time I do, I feel like I’ve taken a mini-vacation. I’m telling you, it’s better than a day at the spa. Well, it’s cheaper anyway. Now that I’ve done this, I have some things to discuss with you.

What I Saw: Of course, you already know the answer to this. I saw I Don’t Know How She Does It, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, based on the novel by Allison Pearson.

This is not a movie review, per se. I just want to clearly state that up front. Personally, I don’t like reading movie reviews. I enjoy writing them even less.

All I want from a review is for someone who is sort of like me to tell me whether or not to see the film. So I’m going to make my “review” short and sweet: Yes, you should see this movie. Because, yes, you will like it. Might you find SJP’s voiceovers annoying? Perhaps. But that’s only because every time SJP does a voiceover for the rest of eternity, we will think of Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. Get over it, and see this likable, holds-a-window-up-to-your-life film.

Caveat: If you’re a very busy woman -- like the main character in this movie, perhaps -- and/or can only see movies on Saturday nights with your significant other, then you can wait until it’s out on DVD. That would be okay with me. But, should you find yourself with 92 spare minutes on your hands, and simultaneously be in need of a chick flick, by all means, go for it.

Instead of me telling you what to think of the film, here’s what we’ll do. You can email me after and let me know what you thought of it. Or, better, yet, share your criticisms below. (Of the movie! Not of me, thanks.)

What I’m Dying to See: Drive, starring Ryan Gosling. Why? Because I read a very positive, in-depth analysis of the film in an erudite periodical, stating that Drive is so much more than a car chase movie? Or perhaps because the film is receiving critical acclaim for its cinematic artistry from the who’s who of Hollywood, winning Best Director accolades at Cannes? No, because Ryan Gosling is a ridiculously beautiful man. Just between you and me, I think I’m in love with him. Like, if he came over to my house and asked me to run away with him, I would seriously consider it before closing the door on him and returning to my kitchen to make lunches for my kids. (Did you see Crazy Stupid Love? No? Ohmigod, you need to.) So, this Saturday night, my husband, Brett, and I have a date with Ryan, and if Brett knows what’s good for him, he will indulge me in this by rolling his eyes and smiling his cute dimples my way as the house lights dim.

If you were to interview Brett about this, he might say that he is secure in the fact that his slightly insane wife really loves him, and that Ryan Gosling wouldn’t really come knocking anyway. He might also say that Drive looks awesome, like The Town, only without the Boston accents. He might say that he loves when the line between good and evil characters is blurred, so that morality exists on a slippery slope.

And, he might add, there’s nothing wrong with an occasional car chase.

I might say that, after seeing Drive, add Blue Valentine and The Notebook to your Netflix cue and throw yourself a Gosling-athon. You won’t be sorry.

I’m also into Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, for similarly profound reasons.

What I’m Not So Sure About: The Artist, a new, silent, black and white film by Michel Hazanavicius. The good news about this being a completely silent film is that, since the actors are French, The Artist doesn’t require subtitles for us Americans who can’t speak French. That’s ingenious!

But seriously, I saw the preview for this film and I can’t quite decide what to make of it. Hokey? Magical? Somewhere in between? Readers: let me know if I should see it.

What to Watch on TV: I love watching television. I’m not sure if that’s a politically correct thing to say, but it’s true. I do. And sometimes, I even watch television with my children. Like, my 9-year-old son, Andrew, and I are into reality shows, from Top Chef and Showhouse Showdown to The Sing-Off and American Idol.

But I’m in need of a new show. I have some room in my line-up, now that Entourage is over. I’m thinking that what I need is funny. There are a bunch of new comedies airing this month, from Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea to Betty White’s Off Your Rocker. (No, I’m not messing with you. Sadly, these are real shows.) I caught 2 Broke Girls on CBS on Monday night, and I’ve gotta say, it was pretty entertaining. The show is written by Whitney Cummings, who will also star in her own show, Whitney, airing Thursday nights on NBC at 9:30. I’m curious. I’m tuning in. I’m also watching Up All Night, starring Will Arnett, Christina Applegate, and Maya Rudolf.

What about you? What are you watching and what have you already decided is too stupid for words?

Speaking of words, here’s something I read this summer: The Red Thread, by Anne Hood. A beautiful, touching story of several families adopting baby girls from China. The story is told from many points of view, giving you a look at the husbands and wives who wish to adopt, those that have mixed feelings, and even showing the point of view of Chinese women who have to give up their daughters.

What I’m reading next: The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. To quote Amazon, “Set during the hazy, enchanting, and martini-filled world of New York City circa 1938, Rules of Civility follows three friends--Katey, Eve, and Tinker--from their chance meeting at a jazz club on New Year's Eve through a year of enlightening and occasionally tragic adventures.” If you liked The Paris Wife – and I did – then this seems like another satisfying, historical tale. A good book group pick, too!

What’s on your bookshelf? What movies and TV shows rock your fall season? Share below.

The first three to write in will get a compilation CD of my new favorite music. (Teaser tracks: You and I by Lady Gaga – so not her standard sound -- and Flower by Amos Lee.)