La Napoule Art Foundation

For over sixty years, LNAF has hosted performances, residencies and exhibitions at the Château de La Napoule by artists the world over. In the last decade, LNAF has expanded its impact through arts education outreach and community programs.

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Fall Residency: 10/18 – 11/14

La Napoule Artist Residencies are open to outstanding accomplished and emerging artists showing exceptional promise. If this sounds like you or a friend, take a look or share this amazing opportunity!

http://www.artistcommunities.org/residencies/la-napoule-art-foundation

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It’s that time of year again! The school year is beginning, and more and more students are finding themselves without any arts education program.

At our Denver headquarters, LNAF is making waves with our outreach program. Through our Visiting Artist Program, LNAF brings professional artists to underserved schools in the Denver area to give them a day of creativity and artistic expression.

Lend your own hand in this movement to bring art back into school! Read more on our blog and then donate online.

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Arts education matters...

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As co-chairs of the Be Creative campaign, we believe recognizing the intersection of arts engagement and education is crucial to both honor Chicago’s legacy as a cultural leader as well as ensure its future.

Richard and Susie Kiphart, co-chairs, Be Creative: the Campaign for Arts Education, Chicago

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Too many people consider the arts and arts education as a luxury. They aren't. If we want to keep growing our economy and putting our kids on the right track, they are a necessity.

Kelli Blanton “Invest in the arts” via @HoustonChron

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The arts can make a difference between these two outcomes--while there are certainly many other factors involved, the arts are proven to make a positive difference toward graduation and a better learning experience. That is why Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that arts education, or the lack of it, has become 'a civil rights issue in America.' And The Conference Board's Ready to Innovate study found that employers want 21st century employees who are creative; this age of innovation demands a creative workforce. At the top of the list for how to become creative is having the arts in the curriculum when the young people were in school.

Robert L. Lynch, “The Arts and Arts Education Are Part of the Solution”

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The drawings are simple -- some in black and white, others accented with splashes of color. They depict the mundane and magical moments of being alive, sitting under a tree with Yoko and sitting atop a cloud with Yoko. The stark line drawings, reminiscent of illustrators like Quentin Blake and Ronald Searle, render images buzzing with emotion and vitality with the most meager (and squiggly) of means.

“Yoko Ono On John Lennon's Forgotten First Love -- Drawing” http://huff.to/1COWE3V via @HuffPostArts

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Infographic: The many benefits of art education. 

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Arnold Goron, an LNAF alumnus, collaborated with w/ Isabel Marant on several Barneys’ Windows. Read about the project in Style.com.  

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Artist and LNAF resident Ron Hicks made a fun video for a recent fundraiser for LNAF’s art education outreach program. Read all about the event here: 

“Cocktails and Conversations for a Great Cause: Arts Education” http://lnafblog.org/cocktails-and-conversations-for-a-great-cause-arts-education/

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The “Gaps Between Ideas and Clarity”: Cara Bonewitz on Her Creative Process

Brooklyn-based artist Cara Bonewitz’s colorful paintings are, as one blogger described them, “intricately complex.” Cara has created commissioned pieces for The Brookings Intitution’s Center for Universal Education and Sing for Hope, a nonprofit organization that connections artists with underserved populations.

Cara is a Spring 2015 La Napoule Artist in Resident, an Exhibition Design Coordinator at Christie’s, and a graduate of Yale University. Before she left for her group residency in France, Cara answered a few questions about her creative process.

Read the interview on the LNAF blog. 

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“How to Enjoy the World” via hyperallergic

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Life Is Sweet: A Conversation with Artist & Alumnus Will Cotton

In 1985, Will Cotton was an art student at Cooper Union who saw himself more in the tradition of Church than Basquiat. When the dean suggested that he apply for La Napoule Art Foundation’s first artist-in-residency program, Cotton needed no persuading.

Thirty years later, Cotton remembers the summer of 1985 at the Château de La Napoule as transformative—a period of time that forever changed how he would create his now seminal depictions of confectionary landscapes and sugary portraits.

During a recent telephone conservation, Cotton spoke about his creative process, working with pop singer Katy Perry, and why he’d love to return to La Napoule.

Read more on the LNAF blog. 

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DETROIT — Tirtza Even’s experimental documentary film Natural Life, currently playing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, explores the stories of five adults who were sentenced to life without parole in Michigan for crimes they committed as minors. The US is the only country in the world that sentences children to life without parole, also known as “natural life,” for crimes they committed before they could quit school, drive, or vote.

The Stories of Minors Sentenced to Life in Prison

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"A prophet unaccepted in his own country"

Algerian poet, essayist, and scholar Malek Alloula died in February in his city of exile, Paris. He was 78.

Alloula was a LNAF artist-in-resident in 1992. His most famous work, Le Colonial Harem, was published in French in 1981.

More about Alloula's life and work can be found in Qantara's "A prophet unaccepted in his own country." 

"It is a word to which I always return, at nightfall, a traditional old blindness, in which I discover once more the perfect sense, from where these voices emanate, to speak so calmly of death, as a lamp extinguished before the debacle."

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How Tom Sleigh, Marilyn Hacker, Deborah Landau, Cecilia Woloch bear witness

Poet and LNAF alumna Cecilia Woloch's new collection was discussed in the Los Angeles Times's Jacket Copy. 

"Finally, Cecilia Woloch's "Earth" (Two Sylvias Press: 46 pp., $11 paper) spins lyrical lines combining witness and wonder. These graceful poems are filled with the voices of the lost: "Our faces the same faces all over again /...my cousin the Cossack, the gypsy, the Jew."

The poems span continents, from America to Russia to Poland, turning empathy to transformation, as a child's grass-covered grave bears eternal witness: "blood mixed with earth of the bones of itself / of which no one knows but the trees anymore / of which no one speaks but the child made of grass."

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LNAF alumnae Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom, aka Ghost of a Dream, mentioned in NYT's article for their contributions to the Wassaic Project.

“It was our dream that something like this would happen,” Mr. Zunino said of the Wassaic Project. “Left to our own devices, I don’t think my partner and I could have pulled it off. Their energy, that’s the magic they bring. The heart of any revitalization is not superimposing your vision, but engaging a community and working within the existing framework of what’s there.”