New York 2007

 

BETTYK MIX STUDIO

From

 

the Nomadhouse 

 

 

 

 

A five day unique and provocative fusion painting workshop

followed by an exhibition of the works in the FIAF Gallery NY

 

 

 

 

 

 

Led by two renowned teaching artists from les Ateliers Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris,

Olivier di Pizio and Gonzalo Belmonte

 

 

20 French and American selected artists will share concepts, stories colors and methods to build unusual creations, inspired by individual and collective experiences

 

 

After spending the week together, the artists all together create a body of work which could be viewed by the public in its entirety as an innovative form, or perhaps only as the work of the individual artist…

 

The interpretation may be multiple: but the works will be provocative enough to set up unusual feelings…

 

 

 

 THE DIFFERENCE

 

At the beginning Bettyk.

French artist, globe trotter from around the world, she loves to come back , full of colors from her trips in mind, and paint at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts de Paris. When she is in America, she paints at the Art League in New York, at the Woodstock School of Art in Woodstock, or in her Studio Gallery, “1.1 Studio”, in Saint Germain en Laye, close to Paris.

 

However she is constantly looking for “different” studio and workshops ; different by the artists working there, different by the leading artists personality, setting up creativity, strong emotions, electric energies, which move the borders between real and unreal worlds in the creation process.

 

Finally she finds the different one: in a very small hidden place, in the heart of Paris, among old handcrafts studios covered with roses, is the di Pizio-Belmonte Studio

 

One is an Italian native, the other one is a Spanish native, but both are teaching artists at the Ateliers Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris, coaching students to graduate in all the French and international Schools of Art.

These two artists ARE different and MAKE the difference: they consider that …

 

“Transmission of art is art”…

 

Olivier and Gonzalo, renowned in Paris, have applied an unusual and collective approach to studio work for over fifteen years. They see their roles as mentors, creating work based on exchange and fusion.

 

In the Belmonte-Di Pizio workshops, each artist participant provides documents from his or her own life [Photos, drawings, paintings, books, magazines, poems, clothes…any item of personal significance].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using these as part of the sharing and creation process, the teaching artists foster the creation of highly powerful works that are at once collective and completely individual.

 

…” the group teaches to the group”…

 

…” we are creating a kind of very specific sculpture with the artists and us; sharing emotions generates a positive flexibility atmosphere that encourages exchanges and dreams”…

 

…”we give all of our energy to share emotions with the artists: our emotions, their emotions, in their artistic creation”…

 

…” it’s a personal and collective transmission…”

 

 

FROM LA BASTILLE PARIS TO THE SKYROOM NEW YORK

 

In 2006, Bettyk and her businessman husband definitely move from France to America

 

New life, new world , New York : they have known and loved for many years this paradox paradise city , both tolerant and violent, mixed colored, and so energetic, where “ you can do it “ is not just a dream, if you want it !

 

First Betty K’s exhibition in June 2006: new people, new meetings, new works

 

The student Art League , where she works every day is a great place to share different painting methods, points of view, colors, cultures, energies with artists from all over the world : American, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Latin American, east European…

 

..But France is not very present...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, why not share with American artists this “different” approach to painting, the one of Gonzalo and Olivier, the one mixing individual and collective work, the one of their Parisian studio, moving to New York?

 

Why not to arouse new and different cultural links between American and French people through this painting approach?

 

That will be done

 

In the Skyroom of the FIAF, a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum: a 1911 beautiful building that was at that time and thanks to American sponsors, the Museum of French Art , where Degas, Picasso, Leger, Braque and many others were exhibited, and where artists could come and work in large studios.

 

In July 2007, the building re-opens to artists with the Bettyk Mix Studio

 

 

 

!

THE BETTYK MIX STUDIO

 

A provocative and intensive painting workshop during one week

 

The workshop hosts 20 selected American and French artists who will “play the game “and create these specific works.

 

May be a new art movement: may be an artistic and cultural cross pollination who will produce a collective work, or individual work done with fragments of different shared stories…

 

And may be also a way of connecting people through art, in spite of their divergences…

 

 

 

 

FROM THE SKYROOM TO THE GALLERY

 

Each artist creates 1 to 4 works during the week [acrylic or any medium on any support]

 

And at the end of the week, the works are exhibited in the FIAF Gallery, during two weeks

 

 

ARTISTS SHARE…..AND DONATE

 

During this workshop, everyone gives and takes to and from the others to create his art work.

 

Extending the concept of sharing, each artist goes further

 

Each American and French artist [teaching artists included] donates one of his [her] works

 

Then these works will be subsequently sold to benefit an American children’s Charity

 

And for sure one day, these children who have no access today to the practice of art, will be the donator artists coming from Bettyk Mix Studio…

 

 

 

 

 

The Bettyk Mix Studio may be duplicated everywhere in the world, thanks to the Bettyk Foundation