A few impressions in a nutshell:

Elaine de Kooning was so interesting—I was always dying to hear her opinions on artworks/artists. She was witty, funny and full of anecdotes—she would tell first hand stories about “Jackson” (Pollock) and “Franz” (Kline). The summer Tom Wolfe’s work The Painted Word came out, she carried it around and thought it was hilarious/right on. She was a chain smoker who took a fist full of vitamins a day to stay healthy.

George Spaventa was warm, and deeply moved by art. Sometimes he would shudder at a piece’s power and turn and walk away, making all of us students look again at the work to see and try to feel what he felt. George conveyed to us his deep sense of the power of form, plasticity, and dimension or implied space around the figure/subject. He would reference Giacometti often. He also would tell many funny and interesting stories of people and artists he met when we sat in the cafes. He had met Giacometti and Brancusi.

Leland Bell was full of energy, passionate and full of jazz references in explaining the push and pull of the space in great works at the Louvre, and he had no patience for works that missed the mark.

I was in the Paris program the summers of 1975, 1976 and 1977, and I studied in NYC on 8th Street the academic year of 1976-1977. I also had the great fortune to study with Mercedes Matter, Elaine de Kooning, and Philip Pavia at Brandeis each for their 1 month visiting artist’s stints there 1973-1975. My greatest affinity was with George Spaventa, I consider him my mentor, but all the instructors in Paris and NYC were amazing.

A fundamental aspect of the school’s curriculum as we know is drawing, and I studied drawing with Nick Carone. The class met 4 times a week for 4 hours and consisted of working from the model with short poses, lasting ~1-5 minutes, culminating usually with a ~15 minute drawing. Nick would push us to understand the push and pull of the space–cajoling and prodding us to convey “what’s in front of what” to paraphrase.

Another great teacher was Louis Finkelstein. I studied with him for art history (held in the library), and painting for non-painting majors. A funny anecdote I remember was a student was trying to draw from a piece of paper that had a corner ripped off. Louis exclaimed, “I don’t know how you can work on that torn piece of paper!” (I paraphrase). Meaning: The precise parameters are critical for the composition!”

I went on to receive my master’s at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1980, studying with Peter Agostini, who commuted between the NYSS and UNC-G. In NY and Greensboro, a critical concept I learned from Peter was to find the breaking points of a plane or sculpting “off the edge”.

Studying at the NYSS, and with their faculty, has been the defining aspect of my education, and will always be a part of me.