As #MCCGoesDigital, we will be sharing a weekly Artistic Challenge with our community that everyone can participate in from home.

Artistic Challenge #5: Made From Home

For this final artistic challenge, we ask that you submit examples of artwork you made in your own home. We want to put a spotlight on the creativity of our diverse community. These works of art can be of any subject and media including photography, painting, printmaking, pottery, jewelry making, textile arts, Lego building, etc. Post your submissions to your social media accounts with the hashtag #EAartchallenge or email your pieces to our studio manager, Evan Hagan, at ehagan@mannycantor.org.

Artistic Challenge #4: Exterior Landscapes

Last week we challenged our community to create a piece of art reflecting their own interior landscape. This week we are putting forth the challenge to create a piece of art inspired by your exterior landscape. Share photos, drawings, paintings, or collage based on your current living situation. These pieces can depict your individual apartment, your building, your neighborhood or even your neighbors. When you post, please include a brief description of your work. This way, the viewer has a better idea of where we are looking.

As we are all currently doing our best to self-isolate, we want to use this week’s challenge as a way for each of us to escape our usual spaces and visit other people and locations. Please post to our collection on Instagram using #eaartchallenge! If you don’t use social media, please send a photo of your piece to ehagan@mannycantor.org with a short description attached.

Artistic Challenge #3: Interior Landscapes 

This week’s Educational Alliance Art School Artistic Challenge is Interior Landscapes. We challenge our community to create an original piece of art based on their immediate physical surroundings, or based their current psychological state. Participants can use whatever media they feel best suits their creative process– photography, pen and ink, oils, acrylic, pastels, etc. Van Gogh famously did a series of paintings based on his bedroom in Arles, France. With this famous piece of art as a stepping-stone, we encourage you to think outside the box and create an emotive landscape of a space that holds a special significance to you in reality or in your memory. Post your interior landscapes with a short description on your social media accounts and add our hashtag, #eaartchallenge. If you don’t use social media, please send a photo of your piece to ehagan@mannycantor.org with a short description attached.

Artistic Challenge #2: Surreal Selfies

With this week’s artistic challenge, Surreal Selfies, we challenge you to create a surreal portrait of yourself that highlights a different part of your personality than what you would usually show the world. We’re using the term selfie loosely for this prompt, your portrait can be an assemblage of meaningful items, a photo of your beloved pet, whatever you like. In these strange times we’d like to use our art to add a little bit of levity into this week.

This article has some great tips for creating surreal photos using your smart phone. Also, Apps like Mirror Photo & Video Editor, Surreal Wigs, and Union, are all great tools to get started creating surreal photos on your phone, and they are all free on the App Store, or Google Play!

Evan’s Surreal Selfie

My Surreal Selfie is inspired by, and maybe even a love letter to, the Saved by the Bell opening credit reel, and 2010s Vapor Wave design aesthetic. Enjoy! For more information about this week’s artistic challenge, click here.

Artistic Challenge #1: Fond Found Objects 

For our first community challenge, we ask that you scour your home for an object that you have collected along your journey that has a greater significance than what one would expect upon first viewing. Once you have found an appropriate item (it can be literally anything, as long as it’s meaningful to you), snap a picture of it, and write a short blurb about what the object is and what it means to you. At the end of this week, we will include your responses into our weekly newsletter and social media accounts. Post your responses on your social media accounts with the hashtag #EAartchallenge, if you don’t use Facebook or Instagram, but would still like to participate, you can email your responses to ehagan@mannycantor.org.