RxArt Education Programs Launched this Spring

Workshop led by Julia Chiang. [image description: a person holds a painting up to the camera, it is blue in semi-transparent washes with what look like glitter buttons stuck on it]

With support form the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, RxArt launched it's new Arts Education programming in 2016. Artists Katherine Bernhardt, Julia Chiang, Will Cotton and Katie Stout each created a project aligned with their unique style of work that they introduced to the children and young adult patient groups at St. Mary's Hospital for Children in Bayside, NY. The Arts Education classes will continue with Rob Pruitt and Eli Sudbrack of Assume Vivid Astro Focus, providing an engaging layer to their RxArt installations. RxArt transforms pediatric hospital spaces into comforting and inspiring spaces through site-specific installations by contemporary artists.

JULIA CHIANG

Julia Chiang’s work has been exhibited at Deitch Projects, Printed Matter, Half Gallery, Tina Kim Gallery, Nanzuka Gallery (Tokyo), Colette (Paris) and OHWOW (formerly Miami, now LA). Chiang collaborated with RxArt as an instructor at Avant Garde Preschool in 2012 and has contributed work to the RxArt Coloring Book, Between the Lines, Vol. 4 and 5. Chiang received her BFA from New York University and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

KATIE STOUT

Katie Stout is a furniture designer living in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from RISD in 2012. Her work has been exhibited in the 2014 Whitney Biennial (as she was tapped by artist Bjarne Malgaard to help design his installation), The Museum of Arts and Design, Karma, Johnson Trading Gallery, and a complete design environment for Design Miami Beach in 2015. Stout was the winner of Ellen Degeneres’s Design Challenge filmed in 2015.

KATHERINE BERNHARDT

Katherine Bernhardt’s wildly dynamic paintings reflect her ever-changing obsessions. She started out making Expressionist portraits of the fashion models she was transfixed by as a teen, dashed off with slashing strokes of colors. After recent trips to Puerto Rico, her work has come to life through sharks, plantains, turtles and papayas. Bernhardt received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Venus Over Manhattan (NY and Los Angeles), CANADA Gallery NY, Team Gallery and others, with her work also featured in group shows at Salon 94, Stuart Shave Modern Art London, Zach Feuer Gallery and many others.

WILL COTTON

Will Cotton’s paintings have been exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe. His work employs two of the most time-honored traditions in painting, landscape and still-life, to create confectionary fantasies which evoke a happy desire of abundance, security, and childhood dreams. He received his BFA from Cooper Union, New York, spent a semester at the Ecole Regionale des Beaux-Arts in France and studied for a year at the New York Academy of Art.