Art as Experience

Dear Families:

With rehearsals for the Middle School Musical underway and the Spring Concert just around the corner, students participating in our performing arts programs are hard at work. As this work unfolds, equally impressive work is being done and has been produced since the start of the year in our visual arts classes. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, next Thursday, May 3rd, and Friday, May 4th, are the dates of our first Middle School Art Show. The show will provide an opportunity for the community to enjoy a wide range of works produced by students in all four grades this year. In putting on this show, it is our hope that the viewer will not only have the opportunity to consider the works themselves, but will take advantage of the opportunity to speak with the artists who created the works. Through this dialog, we hope that you will be better able to appreciate the art as an embodiment of a particular and unique experience.

As John Dewey comments in the opening of his seminal work Art as Experience:

By one of the ironic perversities that often attend the course of affairs, the existence of the works of art upon which formation of an esthetic theory depends has become an obstruction to theory about them. For one reason, these works are products that exist externally and physically. In common conception, the work of art is often identified with the building, book, painting, or statue in its existence apart from human experience. Since the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience, the result is not favorable to understanding. In addition, the very perfection of some of these products, the prestige they possess because of a long history of unquestioned admiration, creates conventions that get in the way of fresh insight. When an art product once attains classic status, it somehow becomes isolated from the human conditions under which it was brought into being and from the human consequences it engenders in actual life-experience.

When artistic objects are separated from both conditions of origin and operation in experience, a wall is build around them that renders almost opaque their general significance, with which esthetic theory deals. Art is remitted to a separate realm, where it is cut off from that association with the materials and aims of every other form of human effort, undergoing, and achievement. A primary task is thus imposed upon one who undertakes to write upon the philosophy of the fine arts. This task is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience. Mountain peaks do not float unsupported; they do not even just rest upon the earth. They are the earth in one of its manifest operations. It is the business of those who are concerned with the theory of the earth, geographers and geologists, to make this fact evident in its various implications. The theorist who would deal philosophically with fine art has a like task to accomplish.

What is it that Dewey wants us to understand? And how might this understanding inform our perspective on the role of the arts in progressive education in general and at LREI in particular? For us and for Dewey, the key notion is that the arts need to always be experienced as being alive in the present where they can provoke “fresh insight.” Even when works of art achieve something of the transcendent, Dewey does not want us to forget that they remain human endeavors that were born out of a particular need and created as a means to fulfill that need. In essence, the making of art represents an attempt to capture something vital about the human experience while existing as experience itself. So LREI artists wrestle with a variety of materials and a variety of techniques in order to capture “an experience for a human being.” That said, I’ll get out of the way and let the art speak for itself and to the experience of the students who created it. I look forward to seeing you at the opening reception, which will be held on the afternoon of the 3rd from 3:15-4:15PM in the auditorium.

This Week’s Attachments
(Click on the links below to open the attachments. If you are having trouble opening the links, go to http://www.lrei.org/weekly/ms/ to access the files.

General:
Community Service Event
Big Auction Flyer

2007-2008 Calendar
Parents in Action Flyer
Eighth Grade:

Seventh Grade:
Sixth Grade:
Fifth Grade:

Of General Interest . . .

1) Tomorrow, Friday, April 27th is your last chance to purchase tickets for the Big Auction which is next Wednesday, May 2nd at 6:00pm at The Puck Building. Tickets must be purchased prior to the event, so if you haven’t already done so, please contact Patricia Conroy at pconroy@lrei.org or 212-477-5316, ext. 232. To see all the great items on offer, you may view the catalog on line at http://www.lrei.org/, pick up a catalog in either the Sixth Avenue or Charlton Street lobby or ask Patricia to mail you one. If you are not able to attend but would like to place an absentee bid, please contact Sandra Song at ssong@lrei.org or 212-477-5316, ext. 275 before the end of business on Tuesday, May 1st. Thank you for supporting LREI.

2) Please read the attached flyer about an upcoming community service event at East New York Farms scheduled for this Saturday, April 28th.

3) To all families who have children participating in the LREI extracurricular sports program: In order to make sure that you receive timely notifications about changes to the practice or game schedules, we have created an email list that we will be using to provide these updates. If you child participates on an LREI sports team, we ask that you go to http://lists.lrei.org/mailman/listinfo/lrei-sports where you will be able to subscribe to the list. The instructions are posted on this page. After you subscribe, you will receive a confirmation email and instructions for how to reply. This email will be followed by a welcome email that will give you additional information about the list. Please note that subscribers to the list will not be able to post to the list. The list is for information distribution from the school. If you need to respond to an update, please respond directly to Marcus (mchang@lrei.org) or Larry (lkaplan@lrei.org). These updates will also go to coaches who will include this revised information in subsequent emails to their team lists. When you receive an email from this list , the subject line will indicate the group for which it is intended (e.g., “[LREI-Sports] HS Baseball”). If your child is not a member of the indicated team, you can delete the email without reading it. We do not expect the volume of this list to be so high that this will be a problem. As we pilot this list, please send Marcus and Larry any feedback that you think would help us to refine this process.

4) For updates on faculty performances, openings, presentations, and publications visit the Faculty in the News page on the school web site.

5) LREI is a member of NYC-Parents in Action (NYC-PIA). NYC-PIA provides parenting education, information and a communications network to help parents prepare their children and teenagers to cope with social pressures and to make sound choices towards a future free of alcohol and drug abuse. Please read the attached flyer to view their 2006-2007 calendar. You can also access their on-line calendar of events at http://www.parentsinaction.org/.

For Eighth Grade Families . . . .
1) Seventh and Eighth Grade classes will visit the New York City Ballet on Thursday, May 3rd to see Romeo and Juliet from 12:00-1:30PM.

For Seventh Grade Families . . .
1) From Matthew and Victor: On Monday, April 30th, the seventh grade will travel to Philadelphia for a day-long trip. We will visit the National Constitution Center, Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and, time permitting, other historical sites. Students should arrive to LREI on the morning of April 30th by 7:30AM. Our chartered bus will be departing promptly at 7:45AM. Students should be sure to bring their writer’s notebook, a bag lunch, an extra sweatshirt, a snack for the ride back and a backpack for these items. Cameras and some spending money (no more than $15) are optional. Students should dress as appropriate for the day’s predicted weather and they should be sure to wear comfortable walking shoes. We will be departing from Philadelphia at around 3:00PM, and expect to return to LREI by 5:00PM. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns.

2) Seventh and Eighth Grade classes will visit the New York City Ballet on Thursday, May 3rd to see Romeo and Juliet from 12:00 to 1:30PM.

For Sixth Grade Families . . .
1) On Wednesday, May 23, the Sixth Grade will visit Carnegie Hall for a LinkUP! concert. The concert is scheduled for 10:15AM.

For Fifth Grade Families . . .
No updates this week

Middle School Sports
Schedules, permission forms and general information about Middle School sports programs can be found at http://www.lrei.org/athletics/index.html. Information is also available through the LREI Sports Hotline at 212.477.5316 x 494.

Looking Ahead . . .
On the LREI web site additional information about upcoming events can be found at http://www.lrei.org/caleven/index.html (the Middle School events page can be found at http://www.lrei.org/midschool/Events.html)

  • Friday, April 27, 2007 — HS Arts Festival
  • Monday, April 30, 2007 – Seventh Grade trip to Philadelphia
  • Thursday, May 3 & Friday, May 4, 2007 — Middle School Art Show, Sixth Avenue Auditorium
  • Thursday, May 3, 2007 – Seventh and Eighth Grade to see Romeo and Juliet at NYC Ballet
  • Friday, May 11, 2007, 7:00PM — MS Musical
  • Saturday, May 12, 2007, 2:00PM and 7:00PM — MS Musical
  • Tuesday, May 15, 2007, 8:00AM — Eighth Grade to DC (return on Friday, May 18, 2006)
  • Tuesday, May 15, 2007, 8:15AM — MS Parent Rep. Mtg.
  • Thursday, May 17, 2007, 6:00PM — MS POCOC Mtg.
  • Friday, May 18, 2007 — Seventh Grade HS Visiting Day
  • Saturday, May 19, 2007, 7:00PM — Literary Magazine Coffeehouse
  • Sunday, May 20, 2007 – AIDS Walk New York
  • Monday, May 21, 2007, 6:00PM — MS Awards Night
  • Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 1:00PM — Middle School Chorus to Hudson Guild
  • Wednesday, May 23, 2007 — Sixth Grade to Carnegie Hall
  • Thursday, May 24, 2007 — Spring Book Sale
  • Thursday, May 24, 2007 — Spring Concert
  • Friday, May 25, 2007 — Field Day
  • Friday, May 25, 2007 — Memorial Day Weekend-School closes at 1:00PM (school reopens on Tuesday, May 29, 2006)
  • Tuesday, June 5, 2007, 8:00AM — Sixth Grade Potluck & Poetry Breakfast
  • Wednesday, June 6, 2007, 6:00PM — Fifth Grade Grecian Festival & Potluck
  • Thursday, June 7, 2007, 8:00AM — Seventh Grade Potluck Breakfast and Constitution Works
  • Friday, June 8, 2007 — High School Graduation (regular dismissal for MS)
  • Friday, June 8, 2007 — MS End of 4th Quarter
  • Friday, June 8, 2007, 6:00PM — Eighth Grade Pre-Moving Up Party
  • Monday, June 11, 2007, 6:00PM — MS Dance
  • Tuesday, June 12, 2007, 9:00AM — Eighth Grade Moving Up
  • Tuesday, June 12, 2007 — Last Day of School, School closes at 12:00PM for all Divisions

Don’t forget to check the LREI website for updates and interesting information – http://www.lrei.org/.

Be well,

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