THE POWER OF ART 2020 How do you make your art your own and use your voice honestly? How can our work as artists best serve ourselves and our community? Can this be symbiotic? In this elective, our music students are encouraged to explore the many facets of themselves, incorporate them with their music, and collaborate with outside art forms and/or causes they feel passionate about. We explore the meaning of art as power which includes the ability to take what we believe in and reinforce our vision through our music. We take risks, we see what works, we see what doesn’t, we sometimes fail, we always succeed.

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The POWER OF ART course is supposed to take students outside of their comfort zones but never did I, as their teacher, imagine this forced, aggressive push into such an uncomfortable, anxiety-ridden, dangerous new reality. COVID-19 has taken us outside of our comfort zones, to put it mildly, but how can we still rally? Should we? How can we reshape our goals, our passions, and adapt so that we can still feel whole? What about space for grieving? Are we allowed to just “be” in this time of crisis?

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We have all witnessed many reactions to the stress and none of them wrong. We do what we need to do for our own self care which can range anywhere from taking some very long daily naps to composing a symphony, from crying long and hard to making people laugh and smile. Where ever you are, whatever you are doing, you are not wrong.

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With that in mind, I am impressed by how all of my students have come to do what they can in this time. The semester began full of enthusiasm to present a final showcase of collaborative, community based, and joyful work this month. Instead, my students gracefully adapted to the time time of the coronavirus and put this website together to bring you what they can and I am so very, very proud.

Stay well. Stay home. Stay safe. Take care. And if you have a moment, please send Adam, Teddy, Angela, Tim, Katie, Robyn, and Lorenzo a big cheer. They deserve it!

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Thank you to the Longy School of Music of Bard College, thank you to our guest lecturers this past semester, visual artist and educator Karl Stephan and composer, performer, and activist Anthony R. Green, and, of course, thank you, dear students. I am so excited to continue to witness your evolution!

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Always an inspiration to be with you,

 

-Sarah Bob