Apr 14, 2016

Thursday

Alumni Day 2016 Celebrates Community and Creativity

This year's Alumni Day provided a wide variety of creative and hands-on experiences for participants.
 
Beginning with a preview of this year's middle school musical, The Lion King, Jr., Alumni Day was also the final opportunity to view Greene Street Friends School's first Alumni and Former Faculty Art Show. The Art Show included works from fourteen artists, ranging from the Classes of 1953 to 2015.
 
Painter and exhibitor Martha Eberbach '54 commented, "The Alumni Art Exhibition, was a smashing success. It was both diverse and eclectic, spanning the 1950s, to the present. An interesting mix of styles, subject matter and media. Sculpture, Photography, Printmaking, Drawing and Painting. Both figurative and abstract. A wonderful example of the scope and fecundity, of the alumni."
 
Presenter Risë Wilson '89 shared about her work as a founder of the Laundromat Project, an organization that works with artists to create projects that build community throughout New York City, with a long-term commitment to the underserved communities of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Harlem, and Hunts Point. Risë described the power of surprising people who were just expecting to do their wash with an art project in process. She noted New Yorkers often don't know or talk to their neighbors. Thanks to the work of the Laundromat Project, people would find themselves having meaningful conversations about their community with those they didn't know, making connections across lines of age, race and other differences.
 
After Risë spoke, alumni had their choice of electives, including taking a tour of the Middle School, recording their "Truth on Equality" with eighth grade students, and painting self-portraits, part of a year-long project examining issues of diversity and equality at GSFS.
 
 For more pictures, check out our Facebook page.